In the Fixed Stars, amazing as it may seem even to amazement-hardened dantisti, to celebrate the protagonist’s arrival at the pre-penultimate station of his ascent through the spheres, no entity less or other than the entire Church Triumphant descends to salute Our Hero. This invention must rival almost all others found in an invention-studded poem for sheer chutzpah on this daring poet’s part. In fact, not all his readers have been willing to suspend disbelief to grant him what the poem clearly asks them to: a face-to-face encounter between the protagonist and all the saints now, before his ascent to the Empyrean. Further details that compound our surely defensible outrage at the poet’s high-handed fabrication are overwhelmed by a single one: when He notices that the protagonist cannot observe this pageant that is put on for his sole benefit because He shines too bright for anything else to be seeable, the Son of God goes back up to the Empyrean alone (Par. 23.85-87), while His saints remain below with Signor Alighieri. (We, if we give our imagination just a little free rein, picture Jesus returning to the now empty Empyrean, stunned by its new silence. Alone for the first time in nearly thirteen centuries, He begins to savor the solitude and the unaccustomed silence. Of course the constant singing has been beautiful; yet its absence for a while is rather pleasant, isn’t it? And then His Mother comes back up, too [Par. 23.118-120].)

Here is our text:

 E come cerchi in tempra d’orïuoli
  si giran sì, che ’l primo a chi pon mente
  quïeto pare, e l’ultimo che voli;
 così quelle carole, differente-
  mente danzando, de la sua ricchezza
  mi facieno stimar, veloci e lente.
 Di quella ch’io notai di più carezza
  vid’ ïo uscire un foco sì felice,
  che nullo vi lasciò di più chiarezza.
                                                            (Par. 24.13-21)

“Un chiarimento speciale richiede la similitudine dell’orologio, dai commentatori non compresa bene. Bisogna dunque pensare a un antico tipo di orologio, prima dell’applicazione del pendolo; nel quale tipo il moderatore e rallentatore del movimento era una ruota a palette a cui il movimento si comunicava dal motore dell’orologio (peso o molla), per mezzo di successive ruote dentate moltiplicanti sempre più la velocità; e questa nella detta ruota era tale che la resistenza incontrata nell’aria dalle palette faceva da freno e regolatore del moto. Tanto più in confronto di questa velocità, la prima ruota, mossa direttamente dal motore, pareva ferma, chè essa faceva un giro in dodici o ventiquattro ore.” [1]

Greater speed and greater brightness are the marks of greater worthiness in these assorted “dancers,” as we learn from verses 19-21. And so we surmise (and rightly) that the one who circles Beatrice three times (verse 22) is special indeed. We have been prepared to meet St. Peter by the last verse of the preceding canto; and here he is.

Among the earlier commentators, John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 13-18) was the first to perceive and express the precise resemblance between the simile’s tenor and its vehicle. For him the circling groups of dancers, compared to fly-wheels, are precisely related in their greater and lesser speeds, revealing, in the saints, their relative degrees of blessedness. John does not go on to observe, and nearly five centuries would pass until Giacomo Poletto, near the end of the nineteenth century, would do so (comm. to vv. 13-18), that, since we are seeing the Church Militant, the circles (spere) we are observing here might well be the same circles we observe later (in Canto 32), that is, the “rows” in the round “amphitheater” of the Rose. Here is what Poletto says:

           “ . . . in questo cielo, rispetto alla differente gloria delle anime, v’ha una circostanza ancor più notabile che negli altri cieli; ed è, che quest’anime essendo venute dall’Empireo accompagnando Cristo, uopo è ammettere che ce n’avesse di tutti i gradi di gloria, dal più alto sino all’infimo; onde si avrebbe, che le differenti ghirlande, ch’or qui danzano con più o meno rattezza, non altro significherebbero che i vari ordini di gloria ai quali nell'Empireo appartengono” (italics added).

If Poletto is correct—and it is hard to see on what ground he may be considered wrong—all those who believe that this particular circle, now rotating in the Fixed Stars, contains only the Apostles need to revise their opinion. As we, in eight cantos, shall have occasion to observe, the highest tier of the Rose contains Mary (Par. 32.1); John the Baptist (Par. 32.31); Adam, Peter, John (as scribe of the Apocalypse), Moses, Anna, and Lucy (all referred to in Par. 32.118-137). All of these, we must assume, following Poletto, are in that circling dance from which issues Peter now. (James and John, who will emerge from it in the next canto, are there too, of course; James, we must then assume, is one of the many unnamed saints in the top rank of the Rose.)

Are all the Apostles present here in Canto 24, in the Rose (Canto 32), or in both places? Dante does not choose to tell us. We probably should not assume that they are here, as do the commentators who, reading that three of them are in this group, go on, quite reasonably (or so it must have appeared to them) to assume that all twelve of them are here—and that they are the only ones here. [2] Both of these deductions (that the twelve of them are here and that they are unaccompanied by any others) may well be false. Three Apostles do not a dozen make. And we are surely encouraged (as was Poletto) to believe that Dante wanted us to think that souls other than Apostles were in this circle (very likely a correct view); however, it is not clear that no other Apostles were in it (this last would seem a more dubious proposition; that is, would not Dante have included, for example, Matthew, Mark, and Luke? James’s presence here argues strongly for his unmentioned presence in the Rose). It is difficult to comprehend why Poletto’s understanding has not entered the discussion of these verses, which remains, as a result, maddeningly vague.

It probably makes sense to understand that Dante, in Paradiso 24, has shown us a preview of the uppermost tier of the Rose, while also referring to its lesser ranks. It would be like him to have done so; any other explanation of the text is decidedly less satisfying.

[2] Those who embrace this probably erroneous view may be reassured that they are in very good company, for Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 13-18) was one of the earliest to do so: “Et sic vide quomodo comparatio horologii nobiliter repraesentat ordinem apostolorum hic se circumvolventium.”