Commentary Par XXXI 12

We are given a clue as to the separate 'dwelling' of God.  According to Fallani (DDP Fallani.Par.XXXI.40-42), among the Scholastics there was a tradition of a second 'heaven' in the Empyrean, the coelum Trinitatis (the heaven of the Trinity), a 'place' distinct from the Empyrean, where dwelt the triune God, separated from the blessed souls.  In Fallani's opinion, Dante accepts that tradition.  It is, however, not clear that he does.  Perhaps he both honors and abrogates it, for his God is not in an 'eleventh zone' of the heavens, but in the one He shares with the saints – if in a higher and thus different locus from them (the distance between the 'floor' and the top tier of the Rose is greater than that between the lowest place in the sea and the highest place beneath the Moon [C.Par.XXXI.73-78]; the distance between that point in the Rose and God would seem to be infinite).  And thus Dante can have things both ways: Is God separate from the saints? Yes and no.  He is infinitely higher up than they, but that does not require that He 'inhabits' another 'place, especially since His 'habitation' is everywhere and nowhere.  It seems clear that Dante intends to avoid this issue.  For the presence of the phrase coelum Trinitatis, in a context that is related, see Thomas Aquinas, Super Evangelium S. Matthaei lectura (51.2, referring to Psalm 36:11 [37:11] and Matthew 5:5, 'The meek shall inherit the earth'; Aquinas explains that the terra [earth] promised them is the Empyrean).  It is not entirely clear, but he seems to think of the Empyrean and the coelum Trinitatis as though they might be considered one and the same.