Liturgical Song and Practice in Dante's Commedia by Helena Phillips-Robins;

Author:Helena Phillips-Robins;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2021-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

And then, in words I have already quoted in this chapter, Bernard enjoins Dante to look on Mary’s face because hers and hers alone can prepare him to look at Christ:

“Riguarda omai ne la faccia che a Cristo

più si somiglia, ché la sua chiarezza

sola ti può disporre a veder Cristo.”

(Par. 32.85–87)

———

“Return now. See that face resembling Christ / closer than all. For that bright light alone / can make you wholly fit to look on Christ.”

These exhortations to look are interspersed with extended descriptions of Dante’s experience of looking at Mary (Par. 31.118–38; 32.88–114) and with descriptions of the souls’ and angels’ ardent looking: Gabriel as “quell’ angel che con tanto gioco / guarda ne li occhi la nostra regina, / innamorato sì che par di foco” (that angel who, with such delight, / looks at our Queen and gazes in her eyes / so deep in love he seems to be on fire) (Par. 32.103–5); Bernard with his gaze always fixed on Mary (Par. 32.1, 106–8); and Mary’s mother, “Anna, / tanto contenta di mirar sua figlia, / che non move occhio per cantare osanna” (Anne, / so happy as she wonders at her child / she does not move her eyes to sing “Hosannah”) (Par. 32.133–35).106

Both in the text of the Commedia and in Giovanni’s illuminations, Dante looks on Mary face-to-face. By illustrating the final cantos of Paradiso with reimagined versions of Marian iconographies—iconographies deeply familiar from, or in the case of the hortus conclusus a recent addition to, liturgical and domestic devotion—Giovanni invites the reader-viewer to practice her own, mediated turning toward Mary. Giovanni invites the reader to pause her reading of the text in order to practice a slow, ruminative looking at depictions of the Virgin, to use those depictions as she would an illumination in a Book of Hours or a religious panel painting at home or in church: as prompts for meditation on the sacred figures depicted, as stimuli to religious emotions of love and gratitude, and as models for how to pray to Mary. Giovanni brings his own contribution to the salvific mission of the Commedia; his illuminations—the Paradiso 31 hortus conclusus, the Paradiso 32 Virgin and Child with Saints, and Annunciation with Saints, culminating in the Paradiso 33 enthroned Virgin and Child, and Virgin of the Assumption—invite and give the reader the tools to turn her attention and affections toward Mary, the one who, for Dante and the Christian tradition of which he was a part, “sola ti può disporre a vedere Cristo.” In Purgatorio and Paradiso, the open, hospitable quality of the subject position of liturgical prayer enables the unfolding of human relationships in and through the unfolding of one’s relationship to the divine. In Purgatorio 30, intercessory prayer—singing for Dante—becomes a means of singing with Dante, as both the singing angels and the silent pilgrim turn toward God through their psalm. In Purgatorio 31, at the end of the narrative of his penitential journey, Dante creates a space for the reader’s own performance of penance.

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