Paradiso: The Fifth Sphere, Cacciaguida Explains Dante's Banishment

In Cacciaguida's explanation of the exile from his homeland that Dante must face, he explains that the time will seem bleak but that the Truth will be revealed over time to men, vindicating Dante's innocence and shaming his accusers through their own culpability. Though Dante will "come to learn how bitter as salt and stone/ is the bread of others, how hard the way that goes/ up and down stairs that never are [his] own" (58-60), he will remain strong in his faith and just and temperate in his response to his exile, for, as Aristotle writes, actions "are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do," and Dante has already in his spiritual journey oriented himself to the good as we will be further instructed by the eagle in the next sphere.



In writing of his exile from Florence, Dante the Poet comes closest in this canto of actually mentioning his family. He writes in Cacciaguida's explanation, "All that you held most dear you will put by/ and leave behind you" (55-6), but he adds that his worst worry won't be the loss of his family but the new company he will find himself among. At the very moment where he could have spoken of Gemma Donati and his four children, he veers away from it -- the story is about his love for Beatrice, after all, and mention of a wife complicates things when in the presence of a mistress.

What Caccagiuda provides him, though, is something very important to his focus in the Comedy, the articulation of his exile in non-cryptic, rational terms -- every other mention of it has been partial and unclear, sometimes even spiteful as in the case of Vanni Fucci's declaration in the seventh bolgia of hell's eighth circle that he tells Dante such a prophecy to grieve him. Far from any such desire, Cacciaguida puts the prophecy in context, comforting Dante and letting him know that God's love will carry him through it and finally vindicate him. What else is the role of a father if not to comfort his scared child and with a wave of his arm whisk away the nightmares of the witching hours and raise the dawn with a lift of his smile?

S.