Kaleidoscopic Beatrice: Through the Theologians, as a Theologian

ABSTRACT In this article, I suggest that the character of Beatrice in Dante’s Commedia should be understood as a theologian, even though her claim to such status relies not on an established historical authority – on written treatises, sermons, works, or reputation – but rather on the nature of the particular person which Dante constructed over his poetic career. The article accordingly reads Beatrice through two major theologians: Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). As case studies, the two present rich opportunities for understanding Dante’s own views about theology, but by seeing them through the prism of Beatrice, we can understand more fully the reasons why neither is sufficient for the pilgrim’s salvation. Beatrice both incorporates and departs from their teachings and authority. In her lover/beloved relationship with the pilgrim, theology becomes not personified, as has often been the claim, but personalised, requiring a person-to-person realisation.

only a benchmark towards which other theologians can aim, but also furnishes them with a hugely influential method of doing theology by way of his allegorical readings of scripture.
Named, historical theologians appear in their numbers in the Paradiso, of course, and represent a wide spectrum of doctrinal points of view. In the Heaven of the Sun, Thomas Aquinas himself introduces a selection of individuals whom we might classify as theologians, including, amongst others, Albert the Great, Peter Lombard, Bede, and Richard of St Victor -this heaven evidently embracing multiplicity and variety. A cursory survey of the theologians brings out the sense of disputation that characterised theology in the late medieval period: Aquinas introduces Siger, for example, a theologian whose views were (ultimately, violently) rejected as heretical by the university in Paris, and condemned by Thomas himself. Critics in the twentieth and twenty-first century have usefully enumerated the ways in which the poet reconciles such antagonisms, for example and most audaciously by bringing the theologians into step with one another and into community -in the image of their dancing (Par. X, 78-79), -thus both celebrating and embodying the order of the universe which their learning sought to uncover. 8 Kenelm Foster draws attention to the unusual focus on peace in Dante's conception of theology, found again in the Convivio II. xiv. 19, and underlines the fact that it bears little resemblance to the practice which Aquinas had helped to establish, and which had at its core the role of reason. 9 Instead, Dante's focus on revelation through scripture, and an idiosyncratic engagement with the notion of peace, downplayed reason and was, according to Barański, 'a sincere effort to mitigate conflict rather than foster it'. 10 Albert Ascoli sees an ambiguity in Dante's use of the word teologia. 11 Like Barański, he notes Dante's focus on biblical interpretation, but Ascoli gives further emphasis to Dante's question of scriptural authorship, specifically, and of the nature of those 'theologians', the scribes of the Bible.
By understanding how Dante incorporates or rejects aspects of Bernard's and Aquinas's works, reputations, and personhoods, I suggest we can better understand what Dante thinks of theology itself, both as a practice -as a means for understanding truths about God -and those truths themselves. My claim is that Dante will attempt to provide those truths in the person of Beatrice. We shall see how the authority of the theologians congregates in Beatrice -radically alternative, as unlike any theologian as it is possible to be: neither educated, male, nor celebrated as an authority. And yet, I suggest, she retains enough of what is considered to be definitive of a theologian -and crucially, what Dante himself explicitly defines in the Convivio -to be considered one too. Beatrice illuminates the truths of the Bible, and thus creates the conditions under which the pilgrim can be redeemed. She delivers a peace to Dante and overcomes the antagonisms inherent in medieval theology, and calms the pilgrim's questioning mind. As well, in her very own personhood, Beatrice embodies and exemplifies for the pilgrim truths about creation and its Creator that only she can, as Dante's beloved.
Something must be said here about the methodological assumptions that are at play in my approach. My aim is not to critically assess any of the particular positions that the theologians might espouse, nor to suggest that Dante endorses or rejects any of these wholesale. Indeed, as has been shown, Dante's 'theology' is eclectic, it is syncretic: the author's compulsion seems always to integrate. In Simon Gilson's words, Dante has a 'strong predilection to harmonise'. 12 So this essay is emphatically not a piece of academic theology, by way of literary criticism. Rather, it is an examination of how Dante the author co-opts the portrayal and the authority of these individual theologians, given what emerges from their works, images, and hagiographies in late-thirteenthand early-fourteenth-century northern Italy, in order to do something very particular in his poem with the concept of theology itself. As such, then, my arguments engage tangentially with the historical domain -as the late-medieval context necessarily underpins some of my claims -but its main focus is textual and theoretical.
In the Commedia, Barański hears in Beatrice a 'psychologically complex [. . .] voice', which was not present in the Vita nova. 13 That voice is the subject of much discussion in the literature: Teodolinda Barolini's description of Dante's heroine as Beatrix loquax is important, and I return to it in the discussion below, but Barolini also suggests, in seeming opposition to Barański, that the Beatrice of the Commedia is far from a complex character with a recognisable subjectivity. 14 Indeed, she says in Beatrice Dante seems to have 'failed to create [a cohesive] character'. 15 For Barolini, the symbols which Beatrice embodies undermine the characterisation of any particular personhood. Below I suggest how we can see that Beatrice herself -not merely the emblems that we can read into her, but the person who speaks, and the person who loves and is loved -is necessary, and can for the pilgrim be a theologian. In life, the Vita nova says Beatrice withheld her salutation from Dante: a mute refusal which the young Dante-character interprets as the denial of his own salvation (VN XI. 4). In the Earthly Paradise, Beatrice's greeting at Purgatorio XXX, 55, when she calls Dante by name, connects the pilgrim's past with his future salvation. Beatrice knows Dante, understands what and who he is, and what is required of him; her word is a call to him as a creature of God, to behold her individual presence and to understand what it means.
Beatrice's back-story as beloved, the desire for her that powers Dante-personaggio's journey, and the desire for his salvation that motivates Beatrice's intervention, shows us that the author of the Commedia considers that love for an individual, and erotic love at that, has the capacity to reveal truths about our place in God's universal order. Regina Psaki urges us to resist the tendency to erase the erotic, the sexual, from the relationship as it is represented, arguing that erotic love is neither replaced by, nor metamorphosed into, divine love. What happens to the pilgrim's and Beatrice's relationship after Purgatorio XXVII is, according to Psaki, 'emphatically [. . .] not [. . .] a purification or transformation of desire'. 16 Furthermore, as Elena Lombardi has compellingly shown, the character of Beatrice makes sense of her own transtextual evolution, a 'development in terms of accumulation rather than opposition'. 17 Indeed, for Lombardi, in the Commedia Beatrice becomes her own reader, understanding not only her role within the poem, but also outwith it, from the construction of the silent lyric lady of the Vita nova to the 'walking and talking extended piece of poetry fathered by God-the-Author himself'. 18 Dante the author may well seek the validation and qualifications of the theologians with whom he is in dialogue, yet it is the character of Beatrice who activates the critical and intellectual conversion of the pilgrim-poet. As I am arguing here, she stands not merely for the personification of theology: rather, she is the instantiation of a person-to-person love relationship which contains within it theological truth. That the character of Beatrice understands this too is, for Lombardi, a move that constitutes the author's 'spectacular "postmodern" metatextual twist, having a character become a critic of her own story'. 19

Beatrice Echoing Aquinas: A Theology of Argumentation
Beatrice's personal yet terrifying greeting of Dante in the Earthly Paradise reverberates throughout the rest of the poem. It is deeply unsettling for the pilgrim and indeed, it is anything but peace-13 Zygmunt G. Barański, 'The "New Life" of "Comedy": The Commedia and the Vita Nuova ', Dante Studies, 113 (1995), 1-29 (p. 8 giving. It inaugurates too her extraordinary theological discourse. Beatrice's words are put in the service of theological explanation until Paradiso XXX, 149 and comprise an essential aspect of her kaleidoscopic persona. Both what she says, and the manner in which she says it, invite us, I suggest, to compare her directly with the historical Thomas Aquinas, medieval theologian par excellence. The range of subjects that Beatrice expounds upon is vast and, on the face of it, she deserves the loquacious moniker that Barolini bestowed upon her. 20 Her 'infallibile' knowledge (Par. VII, 19) is clearly limitless, and her willingness to express it, very nearly the same. It should be unsurprising to us that as an inhabitant of Paradise she should now have an understanding beyond that of her earthly life: souls in Heaven have direct access to God's knowledge and, as she points out to Dante at Paradiso XXVIII, 135, the ignorance on Earth that is corrected in Heaven is a cause for joy, even laughter.
As the pilgrim's teacher, she corrects points of doctrine and contradicts some of the teaching of those Fathers of the Church who accompany her in Paradise. Joan M. Ferrante suggests that [p]erhaps because Dante did not agree entirely with any of the theologians he respected enough to place in paradise, perhaps because he wished to emphasize the distance between God's realm and the earthly church, Dante gives the office of major theologian in his heaven to someone whose sex would have shocked virtually all of the doctors of the church there. 21 Ferrante is right, of course, that it is shocking to have a female voice as an authority on anything at all, not least holy doctrine. 22 It is an audacious move by Dante, but my suggestion in this essay is that there is a more fundamental reason for her inclusion than merely the ones that Ferrante suggests. The necessity of Beatrice as theologian requires the pilgrim to hear her words and her teaching in light of the person that she is, a creature of God, whom he knows and loves. This personalisation of theology is crucial on his journey; his understanding of what it means to be a creature of a Divine creator deepens both in response to his inter-personal relationship with Beatrice, and as she conveys to him her own theological understanding. A demonstration of that limitless understanding can be found in her lecture of Paradiso II, which illustrates to Dante-personaggio and to the reader, early on in their journey together, just how far her encyclopaedic knowledge extends: the entire cosmology of the universe from the Empyrean downwards is spelled out and its workings explained (Par. II,. This is a pattern found throughout Paradiso, as more thorny problems of contentious theological debate arise. In addition to her contributions to the finer points of theological argument, Beatrice has words to say about those who engage in the debates themselves, and those who supposedly preach the Word of God, yet fail to engage with scripture. She warns that the theologians in the schools are both believing and unbelieving. That is, they are either ignorant or deliberately misleading in their lessons (Par. XXIX, 70-84), the latter occasioning more guilt and more shame. Her disapprobation seems to be for a type of intellectual play that does not take seriously the proper task of the theologian, that of illuminating the truths of the Bible. The theologians -the professional university teachers in Paris or Bologna, or indeed, in the Florentine centres of learning -engage in philosophical games and disputations which have little inherent value, but have the power to mislead.
Much has been made of Dante's own report of his exposure to Florentine scuole, but whether these comprised much of Dante's theological and philosophical training is less important than the fact that they shaped the more general intellectual climate of his day. 23 The style of academic teaching that flourished in Paris and which filtered through Europe had at its heart the quaestio format, wherein masters would set out the question for debate, and interlocutors would, in turn, provide responses and replies. In duecento Florence, this method would be heard daily in the disputations in the classrooms, and twice yearly in the For Aquinas's view on Paul's prohibitions of women teaching or preaching in 1 Corinthians 14. 34 and 1 Timothy 2. 12, see Summa Theologica, IIIa Suppl. q. 39, a1: Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1911-1925. Available online at https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5039.htm [last accessed 30 November 2020]. 23 Dante records his own learning in Convivio II. xii. 7, 'ne le scuole de li religiosi e a le disputazioni de li filosofanti'. more public spaces of the quodlibetal debates, which were open to members of the public before Christmas and Easter. And even though university curricula had been shaped in the quaestio format before Thomas Aquinas was in Paris, and before he had written his magisterial summae, by the time Dominican devotees such as Remigio de' Girolami (d. 1319) were teaching in Florence's Santa Maria Novella, Thomas had already, through the huge influence of his written works, come to stand for the scholastic method: his oeuvre crystallised its form. 24 The articulation of theology, the methods which were employed by the religious orders both in their preaching and in their teaching, subsume characteristics that are to be found throughout Aquinas's written works (which were held in the convent libraries of Florence): a rigorous examination of scripture, of ideas, and of concepts, teasing out at length the ramifications of every particular claim and contrary claim. 25 In Paradiso, Dante portrays Thomas dancing in harmony with other theologians with whom he disagreed: dancing, no less, like a woman (Par. X, 76-81). How the author treats the character of Aquinas himself in the poem is relevant, of course, and adds another layer of complexity to our reading of Beatrice here. This, because at crucial points within the poem Dante's portrayal of Thomas subverts expectations: Paradiso XI's encomium to Saint Francis is an obvious example of one such surprise, but there are other ways through which the character within the Commedia complicates a one-dimensional engagement with the historical saint and his oeuvre. 26 Beatrice's scepticism about the value of the professional practices in the schools extends also to preachers, whom she says are silent about the Gospel, and are more concerned with their own celebrity and inventions (Par. XXIX, 95-96). In Paradiso V, 76-78, Beatrice advises the pilgrim to take more heed of the Bible: 'Avete il novo e 'l vecchio Testamento, | e 'l pastor de la Chiesa che vi guida; | questo vi basti a vostro salvamento'. Later in this canto she warns against leaving the mother's milk of the Bible and even 'warring' with one's self (82-84). Her concern, again, appears to be with the type of theological discourse practised in the studia. 27 One could make a case that Aquinas's own theological discourse might itself be read as 'warring' in its very structure. In Aquinas's summae, at least, the structure of the rhetoric is, on its surface, combative: propositions presented and defeated; objections defended; replies devastating; and these all internal to the text itself. He is warring, in some cases, only with himself. And although the aim of Thomas's arguments may well have been to reach a position of 'rest' -a position from which it is possible to be content in the knowledge that reason has supplied -the discourse which he employs to get there is far from peaceful and harmonising. In fact, it is divisive. 28 But I suggest we need not take Beatrice's censure merely at face value. At times in her lectures it is clearly the case that her own rhetoric takes on the character of a Thomas-like argument: we can read From another perspective, the format of Aquinas's written discourse might be interpreted as inclusive or even communal in its style -as a consideration of all possible alternatives, including more authoritative voices. Even if we accept that this is the case, I maintain that there is a commanding (male) voice heard throughout the summae, one that speaks over dissenting voices. That Dante has Aquinas dancing like a woman is an interesting reply to this gendered question.
traces of the historical saint in the characterisation of her discourse. For example, at Paradiso I, 97-98, in reply to Beatrice's direction, the pilgrim uses a technical, scholastic term for 'resting content': 'Già contento requïevi | di grande ammirazion'. It is a word choice which should alert us to the fact that Beatrice's character might not be as straightforwardly anti-theologian as she first appears: on the one hand she rejects the methodologies employed by the theologians in the schools, and yet on the other, as I sketch below, she deploys a series of devastating explanatory missiles herself.
Beatrice's lengthy lecture on the spots of the Moon in Paradiso II causes Dante-personaggio's ignorance to melt like snow under the light of her instruction (106-07); it combines logical, empirical, and experimental reasoning, and demonstrates a methodological approach straight out of classical philosophy and its medieval scholastic heirs. She begins with a reductio ad absurdum, attacking Dante-personaggio's reply to her question about the causes of dark spots on the Moon (64-82); she then appeals to empirical evidence supplied by the senses, and goes on to outline an elaborate thought experiment to show why the pilgrim's explanation cannot be the correct one (83-105). Beatrice's style of argumentation here echoes that found in the works of medieval philosopher-theologians, Aquinas not least among them. And indeed, in Paradiso XIV, the author compares Thomas and Beatrice directly, noting that their explanations share the same lucidity, and so underlining again her heavyweight methodological inheritance.
(Par. XIV, 1-9) Her teacherly style continues throughout. Paradiso V, again, provides a good example. She instructs Dante-personaggio to hold on to the 'scïenza' that she has revealed to him concerning the nature of vows: 'Apri la mente a quel ch'io ti paleso | fermalvi entro; ché non fa scïenza, | sanza lo ritenere, avere inteso' (40-41). Moving towards her concluding remarks she provides biblical (49)(50)(63)(64)(65)(66)(67)(68) and classical examples (69-72) to make her points, marshalling the argument -and the pilgrimalong the way (68). Her countenance remains that of a teacher right up until she finishes her lesson at line 84, but by the end of her speech, indeed from as early in the canto as line 55, a shift takes place in her mode of address: she is less the public orator -the philosopher of the quodlibetal trying out her syllogisms -and has become a preacher, explaining the import of her conclusions for the benefit of the erring souls on Earth: 'Siate, Cristiani, a muovervi più gravi' (73). She is preaching here to the whole of Christendom, and the sounding of authority, now, to all who might hear her, is absolute. Beatrice retains a special status here as a powerful mouthpiece for understanding God's truths, even though all the blessed are endowed with a knowledge that comes directly from the mind of God. Throughout the cantica, we can see how Beatrice provides Dante-personaggio with the means to understand truths previously beyond his comprehension, and to make sense of the sights and sounds with which he is presented. At Paradiso VII, 123, Beatrice clarifies her key point in order that the pilgrim, if he heeds her words, will understand things as well as she does ('perché tu veggi lì così com' io'): in this case, the apparent contradictions of the Incarnation. The overriding tenor of many of her lessons is combative and forceful; they do not admit of 'lite alcuna d'oppinioni o di sofistici argomenti' (Cvo II. xiv. 19); not only are they not tempered or softened by being delivered by a woman, but if anything, her sex only makes the opposite true. And so, as I suggested above, what can be seen throughout Aquinas's oeuvre, in his style of argumentation and the structure of his discourse, so too with Beatrice: if there is peace to be had here, as Dante claims is definitive of theology in the Convivio, if one can 'rest content' in the wake of her argument, it is a peace brought about by the hammer-blow of a single, unyielding voice.

Beatrice Alongside Bernard: A Theology of Desire
The kaleidoscope moves and we see and hear another Beatrice, with a different voice, 'psychologically complex' for sure and, perhaps, telling us more about theology than her lectures possibly could. 29 Placing this Beatrice alongside the historical Bernard of Clairvaux, we can consider her authority in light of the ways in which Bernard's theological authority was constructed.
The qualities of personhood that emerge from Bernard's texts underpin his theological authority. 30 Ultimately, it is an authority built upon desire: desire for God is heard in his affective language about his own experience of the divine, in the kind of raptus that De diligendo Deo (X. 27) and Sermones super Cantica canticorum (Sermon 74. 5) describe; and it is heard in the language found in his letters, where his loving attention to individuals, and the desire for their souls, is the hallmark of his communication, one person to another. 31 Bernard's outpouring of love for God and for humanity manifests at the level of the personal: his concern is for particular individuals. The lament for his own brother in Sermon 26 is one example of how Bernard's theology engages at the personal level. 32 That person-to-person embodiment of the love of the Creator can be seen in Bernard's character in the poem, too. Although there are aspects of the historical saint which had slipped out of focus by the time Dante was writing, or that are perhaps underplayed in the poem -his role as leader of the Cistercians; his role in theological controversies; his role as crusader and as counsellor to popes and kings -there seems to be a close alignment between the historical saint and the character that Dante creates in the poem. Here, unlike in the case of Aquinas, where some of our expectations about the character are confounded, Bernard is indeed recognisable, enough so that early readers, according to Steven Botterill, would have known who he was before he announces his name to the pilgrim at Paradiso XXXI, 102. 33 The poet tells us that with Bernard, the pilgrim is in the company of someone who caught the taste of the divine on Earth: 'contemplando, gustò di quella pace' (Par. XXXI, 111). In Bernard's sermons on the canticles 'taste' is just right: 'Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth: for thy breasts are better than wine', writes the author of the Song of Songs. 34 For Bernard, more so than for other commentators (who perhaps read the Bride as the Church, or even the Virgin), the Song is a wedding hymn celebrating the marriage of God and the individual soul, and is thus a means for describing the mystical experience of God through the primacy of the Incarnation. It is something made possible through bodies: both through the contemplative himself, who desires the experience, akin to erotic desire, but also through the body of Christ in the Incarnation. The experience is sensual like a kiss, a taste of God, something to be desired, bodily. 35 But Christ is also the event of the kiss itself, the mediator between two lovers, man and God. Thus Bernard and Beatrice are connected by the very first words which announce her arrival in the Earthly Paradise, 'Veni, sponsa de Libano!' (Purg. XXX,11), and subsequently, 'Benedictus qui venis!' (19). Beatrice is hailed as 'both the Bride from the Song of Song and as Christ, the bridegroom': from the outset, the irreducibility of her character is brought into play. 38 Bernard's wholehearted commitment to the language of eros takes on the ambiguities of gender-switching too: in Sermon 74 on the Song he loses himself because he is a beloved penetrated by the Bridegroom. Similar reversals can be read at different moments between the pilgrim and Beatrice. For Olivia Holmes, 'Beatrice is both bride and bridegroom, both the Church, or the Christian soul, and Christ [. . .] so, too, is the pilgrim, who marries her'. 39 The pilgrim's eyes are directed by the desire of both Bernard and Beatrice: their ardour for God and for Mary focuses his attention. Through word and gesture, Bernard encourages Dantepersonaggio to look again at the Virgin enthroned: Bernardo, come vide li occhi miei nel caldo suo caler fissi e attenti, li suoi con tanto affetto volse a lei, che ' miei di rimirar fé più ardenti. (Par. XXXI, This passage recalls an early fourteenth-century Florentine lauda to Bernard, in which he is called an aquila contemplativa. 40 In the medieval bestiary, eagles are known for their clear-sightedness, for looking directly at the sun and forcing their young to do the same. Dante-personaggio certainly has the appearance of a child, even a grandchild, of the venerable sene. And this parental relation he shares with Beatrice, the mother bird of Paradiso XXIII, 8-9, who 'con ardente affeto il sole aspetta | fiso guardando'. At the beginning of the cantica, Beatrice's powers of looking towards the sun in fact exceed the eagle's: 'vidi rivolta e riguardar nel sole: | aquila sì non li s'affisse unquanco' (Par. I, 46-48). The effect of Beatrice's looking is to turn Dante-personaggio's gaze towards the sun too, beyond his usual capacity: così de l'atto suo, per li occhi infuso ne l'imagine mia, il mio si fece, e fissi li occhi al sole oltre nostr ' uso. (Par. I,[52][53][54] This early in the cantica of heaven he is unable to sustain the sight for long, but instead reverts to looking at Beatrice herself. Thus both Bernard and Beatrice compel Dante-personaggio to look; something of their desire transmits to him. This looking is literal: Beatrice turns towards the light, and at Paradiso XXIII, 28-29, the pilgrim sees Christ in Triumph as 'un sol'. Theologians furnish their readers with understanding through scriptural interpretation; they direct their readers and their congregations; they teach them how to see the truth of the Bible (or should do so, according to the Convivio). The light of the sun, of Christ, reveals the truth that the theologians help to uncover. In Beatrice, the maternal aspect (that of the mother bird who looks to the sun and who helps her offspring to do the same) is an important element of her personhood. Earlier, in Purgatorio XXX, Dante-personaggio's response to Beatrice's arrival in the poem reduces him to a boy running to his mamma, even though it is to the now-disappeared Virgil that the pilgrim has turned (43); a little later, the pilgrim is still the child, but now Beatrice, after she has delivered her first rebuke, has become like a scolding mother (79). Barolini reorients us to the main theme of the Commedia, however, when she says that 'the dominant register in Dante's portrayal of Beatrice is erotic'. 41 The 38 Carolynn Lund-Mead, 'Dante and Androgyny ',in Dante: Contemporary Perspectives,ed. by Iannucci, maternal and erotic are forms of human love that can only be understood in each case as particular: one cannot be in love with just anyone; not everyone can be one's own child. The integration of theological truth with erotic love within the person of Beatrice has of course been the preoccupation of many of the responses to the Commedia, both in the academic sphere and the wider cultural landscape. 42 We saw above that Beatrice shares with Bernard the same desire for seeing God. But Beatrice's desire is double-sighted: it looks at God, and it looks at Dante-personaggio too, and not only because she desires his salvation.
The pilgrim's encounter with Beatrice is remarkable for the complex interplay of looking-at and looking-away-from that goes on between the two characters. They are each intent upon this lovers' dance of the eyes: desiring to look; looking; fainting; turning away from; returning the gaze; commanding the other to look. It is an almost entirely erotic interplay, even though at the same time, Beatrice is teaching the pilgrim to look beyond her, by looking at her. Only after the pilgrim has seen the light of Christ in triumph approaching, has he, according to Beatrice, gained enough strength to look at her unveiled face and behold her smile, to see what she really is ('riguarda qual son io', Par. XXIII, 46). Peter Hawkins notes that, 'it is to the sign of her face that he will continually turn his gaze, as if pulled by her beauty to the mark of his greater desire [. . .] and therefore to a reality that lies beyond her'. 43 The eroticism of the encounter between the two characters -and the whole of the pilgrim's journey is based on encounter, inaugurated as it is by the sound of Beatrice's name in Inferno II, and spurred on again in Purgatory on the terrace of lust when Dante-personaggio responds again to the sound of her name -can be illuminated by considering the recurring metaphor of the arrow, from a poem full of such imagery, which builds an erotic intensity: the shiver of a sexual spark between the two. Of no greater or lesser importance, this metaphor also stands for the dawning of intellectual insight, and thus we see again, just as we see with Bernard's language of erotic love, that the affective and the intellectual modes of thought are tied together by Dante, integrated into a picture that would otherwise be incomplete.
The image of the arrowshot itself is important, but its arrangement within the poem also deserves attention. In Paradiso II, Dante-personaggio and Beatrice have moved to a new location, the Heaven of the Moon: 'forse in tanto in quanto un quadrel posa | e vola e da la noce si dischiava' (23-24). The rapid transfer is quickly followed by the pilgrim's new awareness: he reaches a place where he can 'see', and this knowledge dawns only after looking at Beatrice herself (22). Here, then, the looking, and the movement through the heavens, and the new knowledge belonging to the pilgrim, become phases of an integrated action, just as the arrow's hitting the target, its flight, and its release from the bow are part of the same. But this beautiful tercet not only gives a sense of rapid movement, and of knowledge dawning as the target is hit; it simultaneously brings us back to the ways in which Dante-personaggio is tethered to Beatrice. The formulation of the flying arrow moreover is here presented to us backwards: we hear of it hitting its target before we hear it has left the bow. In crafting his imagery in this way, the poet achieves something all the more powerful.
By Paradiso II the pilgrim might be the originator of the arrow itself, one that ends, teleologically and necessarily, given his location, in knowledge. 44 And yet there remains an erotic reading of the arrow: it hits a target before one is even aware it has left the bow; it looses its catch as though there is no way of controlling it, like a body directed by eros: Eros the bowman, Dante the bowman. Beatrice is the target, the locus of a lover's attention. And how are we to understand, from our Earthly perspective, just how the heavens are arranged, how bodies can penetrate bodies, 'se corpo in corpo repe' (Par. II, 39)? How can we understand the ways in which God exists? Affective language about Beatrice provides a means, just as Bernard had provided a way to talk about God through his exegesis on the Song of Songs and his sermons, such as De diligendo Deo X. 27, where he described his experience of God as being lost in Him. 45 Desire to know, desire to see, desire to experience: Dante-personaggio first has to learn that all these desires, begun as they are in Beatrice, must end, necessarily, in God.
The pilgrim's love for Beatrice as a 'unique and unrepeatable event', contains within it the truth of God's creative power and love. 46 Once he is able to understand what this means, he is able to see the face of God itself, because his love for her has been transfigured: the truths contained in Beatrice are in fact God's own truths. 47 Bernard's love manifests itself at an individual level too -love for his communitybut although his love is for particular individuals, it is global in its scope, and as such it is not an erotic love. A commitment to a particular person is one of the hallmarks of personhood: erotic love tethers two separate individuals together, the arrowshot pierces and unites two hearts. And in love, from the limited perspective of human personhood and consciousness, one draws closest to understanding the possibility of being Other, of being created otherwise, because the desire for union with the beloved -for their presence, their touch, and the loving preoccupation for their person -only throws into relief the ways in which they are not one's own self, the ways in which they are not I.

The 'I Am' of Beatrice
The theologian, then, following Dante's own idiosyncratic definition, will be a conduit of peace. In the Commedia, this peace is gained from intellectual insight, in the knowledge that sound argument secures; Beatrice, as we have seen, delivers this type of knowledge to Dante-personaggio in her extensive theological discourse which incorporates the trappings and argumentative devices of the academy. But as Hawkins has shown, her insight itself comes from her personal experience of seeing directly the truth of the Empyrean. Thus, as Hawkins says, on the contested matter of the angelic hierarchies, Dionysus gets to agree with her, and not the other way around: 'Dante is contrasting his certain vision of truth with the theologians' mere speculation about it'. 48 Beatrice's knowledge and the blessedness it endows is based on the act of seeing the truth of God directly, not in an act of love, as she makes explicit: Quinci si può veder come si fonda l'esser beato ne l'atto che vede, non in quel ch'ama, che poscia seconda (Par. XXVIII, The questing intellect will see and find rest, and this knowledge will give rise to love. Hence blessedness enacts the eternal return of desire for God; perfectly satisfied in Heaven, yet still perfectly desirous as creatures for the Creator. 49 Seeing is knowing, and in knowing one can rest: but this rest does not extinguish love and desire, indeed it spurs it on and maintains it in the perpetual praise of the blessed for God, as his limitlessness deserves: 50 Lume è là sù che visibile face lo creatore a quella creatura che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace. (Par. XXX, 100-02) Dante-personaggio has seen and known his beloved before the story of the Commedia begins; theirs is a love story of retrieval. Aquinas also 'envisions a certain circularity in the relationship between intellect and will' but even so, Tamara  what seeing her as his beloved, and as part of God's creation, really meant. And thus the Commedia is also a positive re-writing of the Aeneid, because the pilgrim's journey is a divinely-willed mission, but Beatrice, unlike Dido, is absolutely necessary to its fulfilment. Beatrice's knowing Dante, and being known by him, is the foundation stone on which his journey rests. Although the poet claims, 'Io non Enëa, io non Paolo sono' (Inf. II, 32), it is indeed Saint Paul, in the first letter to the Corinthians, who provides the template for Dante to construct a way of knowing God 'face-to-face' and, in turn, of being known. 51 And even though, as we have seen, so much of her discourse mimics that of historical theologians, and as such seems to derive an intellectual authority from the same sources as theirs, I suggest that her authority is already established in the poem before she puts those didactic devices into play. Her authority over the pilgrim is fuelled by her very earthly personhood, and the relationship to which their love gave rise. In paradise, she has the additional qualities that other theologians demonstrate on earth: she elucidates; she teaches; she answers and calms a questioning mind. But even though she can only be a theologian in heaven, she authors the pilgrim's journey before we even hear anything of that infallible voice. It is her relationship with Dante-personaggio, built, in the fiction, upon years of human love, that forces a reappraisal of what understanding the nature of God consists in.
In being known as a particular, concrete, human individual, a prerequisite for being loved and being known by Beatrice, the pilgrim can come to know himself too, and know what is required of him in his approach to the face of God. In Paradiso I, 85, by way almost of an aside, the poet refers to Beatrice as someone who sees right in to him: 'Ond' ella, che vedea me sì com' io . . . '. It is a profoundly intimate moment wherein Beatrice explains to the pilgrim that, even before he has had opportunity to articulate it, he is muddled and confused in his interpretation of the new sights of Heaven that he is witnessing. She is able to inhabit his still limited and error-prone perspective, seeing the pilgrim as he sees himself, and through smiling words ('per le sorrise parolette brevi', 95) is able to help him see the truth. This is the realisation of a divine truth within a face-to-face human encounter, an encounter which remains human despite Beatrice's beatitude and limitless knowledge.
The pilgrim is able at her invitation to see what Beatrice herself is ('qual son io', Par., XXIII, 46), only after his mind experiences a kind of raptus upon seeing a vision of Christ: 'la mente mia [. . .] | fatta più grande, di se stessa uscìo' (43-44). And so one 'seeing' quickly follows another, but they are punctuated by the pilgrim's experience of an almost dissociative state (he claims a quasi-inability to narrate it) similar to Bernard's description of his taste of the Divine in De diligendo Deo. What does this mean? Dante-personaggio has known Beatrice since youth, but his retrieval of her actual meaning can only occur now, once he has taken up a perspective beyond only his own. His mind, exiting itself ('di se stessa uscìo'), is able to see what Beatrice really is.
This retrieval of knowing what Beatrice is began in the dark wood, but when he finally meets her again in the Earthly Paradise, he still lacks the capacity for knowing, even though, like Paul, he himself is known. 52 Beatrice says 'Dante', at Purgatorio XXX, 55: and by naming him, as we saw above, she claims him for her own knowledge, and cements the reciprocal erotic relationship. But there is no peace to be found, yet, in the pilgrim's trembling mind or shaking body (47). Her words, which invite him for the first time to see and to know who she is, who she really is (emphasised in the repetition: 'Guardaci ben! Ben son, ben son Beatrice', 73), cannot be met in reply with a truly face-to-face encounter: she remains veiled to him. Dante-personaggio can only let his eyes fall downwards and so, shame-filled, literally sees only himself and the limited perspective he occupies, Narcissus-like, in the reflection of a stream (76-78).
Beatrice tells him not to weep at Virgil's disappearance. In doing so the episode mirrors the events in that other garden, in the Gospel of John 20. 15-16, when the risen Christ appears to a weeping Mary Magdalene, who also mourns a disappearance. From the mouth of the empty tomb, she turns her face to Christ but does not know him -he is veiled to her -even though she knew him and loved him in his old life; she does not know who he really is now, or what he means, not until, 51 1 Corinthians 13. 12. 52 1 Corinthians 13. 12. that is, he speaks her name, 'Mary'. With this new knowledge comes the peace that Christ gives: he gives it three times, at John 20. 19, 21, and 26.
The resemblances between these two episodes remind us that Beatrice will also confer a peace: not necessarily because she is a Christ-figure (although she is probably that too), but because, as I am suggesting, she is a theologian, and thus peace-giving is within her purview. She directs the pilgrim towards blessedness, through her theologically rigorous lessons, but also through her very person. She is the embodiment, for Dante, of the power of the Creator and his love. Without these two lessons, of intellect and of love, the pilgrim cannot hope to see the Godhead face-to-face. Early in the final cantica the author tells us the pilgrim's gaze is unable to sustain the beauty of Beatrice's face. Dante had claimed this before in his youth, in the canzone 'Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore', where he says, 'Voi le vedete Amor pinto nel viso, | là 've non pote alcun mirarla fiso' (55-56). By Paradiso XXIII, Dante-personaggio beholds her, but the poet is unable to capture her smile in poetry: the resulting leap that his 'sacrato poema' (Par. XXIII, 62) must make becomes, according to Vittorio Montemaggi, 'paradigmatic of what writing about paradise in a "sacred poem" is, in fact, all about'. 53 That Beatrice herself has become ineffable, that an absence of words, a failure of human language, has come to define her being, foreshadows the silence at the end of the poem, a silence perhaps necessary in contemplating an ineffable God.
Desire for Beatrice ends not in the peaceful consummation of eros but in the eternal return of desire and satisfaction in God. This has only been possible through Dante's particular relation to Beatrice: love for her has provided the conditions under which he can see his own place in the universe -see himself as part of God's created order -and see the participation required of him. Truth is found from considering the perspective beyond his own, but it has been a necessarily perspectival, particular journey. The one unrepeatable event of the poem, and the one unrepeatable event of Beatrice -like the 'ontological event' of the second person of the Trinity becoming man 54in an encounter with her person, and her face, has led the way to an encounter with the face of the Trinity itself. The 'I am' of Jesus Christ (John 8. 58), of the Incarnation, becomes visible to the pilgrim once he sees what Beatrice is, what 'I am' truly means. 55 Beatrice is never completely divested of her role of the beloved: we can continue to read her relationship with Dante-personaggio in these terms until well after her removal to the heavenly rose. Dante is at pains to remind of us of Beatrice's role as the one whom he loves. The Commedia is replete with reminders that Dante is in the presence of his beloved and that '[m]ille disiri più che fiamma caldi' draw his eyes to her eyes (Purg. XXXI,118). Just the sound of her name causes a reaction in him (Par. VII, 13). We cannot take away from Beatrice her historical situatedness: her personhood is never entirely erased, even though there is inevitably a tension between Barolini's 'radically alien construct' of her role as teacher, preacher, and Christ-figure, and the person that the author supposedly saw walking in the streets of Florence. 56 In conclusion, therefore, I suggest that instead of Beatrice merely standing for theology personified, in the relationship with Dante, theology becomes, instead, personalised, requiring a person-to-person realisation. Indeed, the importance of human relationships, the face-to-face meetings of the pilgrim with the souls in the afterlife, and his growing understanding about his place in God's universal order as a result of those meetings, is obviously one of the author's primary themes. But in his kaleidoscopic characterisation of Beatrice, Dante enables us to see beyond mere encounters. He draws us closer to an understanding of the nature of human love and createdness, and he voices in Beatrice, and demonstrates in her very personhood, the divine love whose munificence is the ground of all being.