Saturn. Beatrice does not smile here — she explains that her smile in this sphere would be so powerful that it would shatter Dante as Semele was shattered when Jupiter revealed himself in full glory to her mortal eyes. The contemplatives' sphere is too close to the pure divine light for her full expression. There is also no singing in Saturn — the silence is the silence of pure contemplation, the interior life turned so completely inward that outer music becomes unnecessary.
A golden ladder rises within the sphere, its top vanishing far above — as far up as the eye can see. Souls descend the ladder like light flooding through clouds, blazing as they come. One stops to speak: Peter Damian, the 11th-century Benedictine reformer and Cardinal, who advocated for clerical celibacy and monastic austerity with tremendous force in his lifetime. He speaks of his monastery at Fonte Avellana — dedicated to the Virgin, on the slopes of the Apennines — with the calm, spare love of a man who found his home in prayer and poverty.
Dante asks why he was chosen to speak rather than another. Peter Damian answers: predestination is beyond all human sight, even the sight of the greatest intellects in Heaven. No created intelligence, not even the highest seraphim, can reach its root. Carry that limitation home. Then Peter turns to fury — the most concentrated burst of invective in all of Paradiso. The modern prelates, fat and slow, carried on horseback — it takes two men to hold up one bishop's cloak — are an abomination in the sight of the Church's founders. Peter and Paul went barefoot and lean. These men are devoured by lust for wealth and power. Patience, Peter says. But the judgment is coming. The other souls ring out a cry at his words — so loud and bright that Dante is stunned and cannot comprehend it.