The great Rose. Dante, for the first time in the whole Commedia, is entirely silent — looking, absorbing, unable to speak. The Rose fills a space that is somehow both immense and intimate — thousands upon thousands of souls in tiers, the lower tiers not obscuring the upper because the light that constitutes the Empyrean is not spatial in any ordinary sense. All faces are turned toward the central light; all radiate the reflected light outward. Angels descend as bees to flowers, bearing the love of their ministry between the souls and the divine source, their faces like flames of living fire, their wings of gold, their robes as white as snow.
Bernard, the 12th-century mystic and abbot of Clairvaux — the great master of contemplative prayer in the medieval tradition — is the guide chosen for this final stage. He was not a philosopher but a lover: his mystical theology was all experience and devotion, the direct knowledge of the heart. He is perfectly suited to guide Dante through what remains, which is no longer argument or doctrine but vision. Bernard shows Dante where the great figures sit in the Rose: the Virgin Mary enthroned at the very top, beneath her the Patriarchs of the Old Testament on one side and the faithful of the New on the other. He shows Dante John the Baptist opposite Mary, Francis, Benedict, and Augustine below. And he shows Dante the empty seat — set aside, awaiting its occupant — marked by a crown: the seat of the Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg, whom Dante believed was divinely appointed to restore the empire and who died in 1313 before he could. The papacy itself prevented it, in Dante's view. Even here, even now, Dante cannot let this political grief go entirely.