The great cry fades. Beatrice steadies Dante, who is still shaken. More souls descend the golden ladder — a larger group now. One speaks: Benedict of Nursia, the founder of Western monasticism, author of the Rule that shaped the entire medieval monastic tradition. He identifies himself simply and with enormous dignity. He mentions his hermitage at Cassino, the pagan temple of Apollo he destroyed to found his monastery, the many souls his Rule has guided to Heaven. Macarius and Romualdo of Ravenna, two other great monastic reformers, are here with him.
Dante asks to see Benedict's face unveiled — the desire to see the beloved clearly that drives the whole canticle. Benedict answers: this will be satisfied in the Empyrean; here, the process of perfection has not reached its final unveiling. Then Benedict mirrors Peter Damian's lament: the Rule he wrote, the monasteries he founded — look at them now. The walls of the monastery are built of stone but inside there is nothing but emptiness. The monks' cowls are sacks full of rotten meal. Usury is less an offense against God than what they practice. But God has performed greater recoveries than this. Take heart.
They ascend past the sphere of the Fixed Stars — a trajectory so swift that Dante looks down and sees, far below, the tiny track of his journey: the earth's globe small as a threshing floor, the seven spheres arranged beneath him. He sees the moon's shadow, the sun blazing at a different angle, the whole of the terrestrial world as a pebble in space. He smiles at how small it is — the "little threshing floor that makes us so fierce."