Commentary Par XXXI 59

See Bosco/Reggio (DDP Bosco.Par.XXXII.40-75), who point out that by portraying Bernard as an old man (sene), Dante is violating a commonly understood ground rule of Paradiso, that all souls are, in their perfected beings, of the age of Christ in His last year on earth, when he was thirty-three.  (This is sometimes given as thirty, thirty-three, thirty-four, or even thirty-five.)  Why Dante chose to violate this 'rule' is not clear.  Bosco/Reggio opt for an artist's rebellion against a view that would inhibit his artistic virtuosity, an old Bernard being more believable than one in his renewed youth.  And see Carroll (DDP Carroll.Par.XXXII.1-48), discussing the babes seated in the lower half of the Rose: 'Further, as we saw in the case of Bernard himself, Dante appears to ignore the doctrine of Aquinas that in the Resurrection the saints will rise at the age of thirty.  Bernard, himself an old man, draws his attention to the child faces and voices of the lower ranks [[Par XXXII 46-48]].  Each soul, apparently, wears the form proper to the age it had attained on earth, freed of course from weakness and defect of the flesh.  Dante evidently felt that there would have been something incongruous in making babies, who had never exercised true choice, appear full-grown in the flower of life.  [Augustine thought otherwise: infants would receive "by the marvelous and rapid operation of God that body which time by a slower process would have given them" (DcD XXII.14).]'  For a counter-thrust, see Aversano (Aver.2000.1), p. 167, on [Par XXXII 46].  He argues that in Dante's Empyrean we see only the aspects worn by the saints as of 'now,' in the year 1300.  They will 'mature' (or grow younger, as the case may be) in their appearance only after the General Resurrection, citing [Inf VI 103-111].  Are we thus to believe that what Dante sees now is only temporary likenesses of these souls?  Perhaps.  But surely Dante would have given us a clue that this is what we should understand.  In any case, Aversano is perhaps alone in this interpretation.