Dante pauses to direct the reader's gaze upward: contemplate the order of creation — the point where the equatorial and zodiacal circles intersect — and understand that this ordered tilt of the universe is what makes life on earth possible: seasons, weather, fruitfulness. This orderliness is the work of the divine mind. Do not miss it. Then: look higher. They have entered the Sun.
The Sun is so bright that Dante cannot describe the ascent into it — the light exceeds all metaphor he can reach for. He is surrounded by singing presences, even brighter than the sphere itself, forming a crown around Beatrice and himself as they stand at the center. The dance of spirits is like stars around the pole. They complete one full revolution, then pause to speak.
Thomas Aquinas speaks first — the Dominican friar, philosopher, and theologian, the architect of the Summa Theologiae, the greatest systematic mind of medieval Christianity. He introduces himself simply: "I was a lamb of the holy flock that Dominic leads on the road where well one fattens if one does not stray." Then he names the other eleven souls of the crown, beginning with his teacher Albertus Magnus and proceeding through Albert of Cologne, Gratian (the great canonist), Peter Lombard, Solomon (whose wisdom exceeded all kings), Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Paul Orosius, Boethius (described in his love for the true good, stripped of his body in Cieldauro), Isidore of Seville, Bede, and Richard of St. Victor. Last — and most surprising — he names Siger of Brabant, the Averroist philosopher whose radical Aristotelianism Aquinas had vigorously opposed in life. Here they are, side by side in Heaven, dancing together. The theological controversies of the schools dissolve in the light of what they were all pursuing.