The Earthly Paradise and Matilda

Dante's arrival at the Earthly Paradise, the summit of Mount Purgatory, marks the culmination of his purgatorial journey and the threshold of his ascent to Heaven. Here, in a forest dense and living-green, he encounters a solitary lady, Matilda, who reveals the theological and natural order of this sacred realm, a place created by God as a hansel of eternal peace for humanity and lost through Adam's sin. This event transforms Dante's understanding of the Fall, the nature of the Earthly Paradise, and the function of the two rivers that flow through it, preparing him for the appearance of Beatrice and the final purgation of his memory.

The Sacred Forest and the Encounter with Matilda

Eager to explore the heavenly forest, Dante leaves the bank and walks slowly over the fragrant soil. A softly-breathing air, without mutation, strikes his forehead like a gentle wind, causing the branches to bow toward the side where the Holy Mountain casts its first shadow. The little birds on the tops sing with full ravishment, receiving the hours of prime, while the leaves bear a burden to their rhymes, like the sound that goes gathering from branch to branch through the pine forest on the shore of Chiassi when Eolus unlooses the Sirocco. Dante's slow steps carry him so far into the ancient wood that he cannot perceive where he entered. His further course is cut off by a stream whose little waves bend down the grass on its margin. All waters on earth that are most limpid would seem to have some mixture compared with this one, which moves on with a brown, brown current under the shade perpetual, never letting in a ray of the sun nor of the moon. Staying his feet, Dante passes with his eyes beyond the rivulet to look upon the great variety of the fresh May. There appears to him, suddenly, a lady all alone, going along singing and culling floweret after floweret, with which her pathway is all painted over. Dante addresses her, saying she makes him remember where and what Proserpina was at the moment when her mother lost her, and she herself the Spring. The lady turns toward him, like a maiden who casts down her modest eyes, and approaches so near that the dulcet sound of her singing comes to him together with its meaning. Erect upon the other bank, she smiles, bearing full many colours in her hands, which that high land produces without seed.

The Nature of the Earthly Paradise and the Rivers

Matilda explains that the Good Supreme, sole in itself delighting, created man good and gave him this goodly place as a hansel of eternal peace. By his default, man sojourned here but a short while, changing his innocent laughter and sweet play to weeping and toil. The mountain ascends so high toward heaven to be exempt from the disturbances caused by exhalations of the land and water, which follow after heat. The universal atmosphere turns in a circuit with the primal motion, and upon this height, all disengaged in living ether, the motion strikes and makes the forest sound, for it is dense. The stricken plant possesses so much power that it impregns the air with its virtue, and this, revolving, scatters it around; the earth below, according as it is worthy in self or in its clime, conceives and bears the divers trees of divers qualities. Therefore, it should not seem a marvel on earth whenever any plant without seed manifest takes root. This holy table-land is full of every seed and has fruit never gathered there. The water that Dante sees does not spring from a vein restored by vapour that the cold condenses, like a stream that gains or loses breath; it issues from a fountain safe and certain, which by the will of God as much regains as it discharges, open on two sides. On this side, with virtue it descends, taking away all memory of sin; on that, of every good deed done it restores. Here it is called Lethe, as upon the other side Eunoe; it worketh not if first on either side it be not tasted. This every other savour doth transcend.

The Golden Age and the Prelapsarian World

Matilda tells Dante that those who in ancient times feigned in song the Age of Gold and its felicity dreamed of this place perhaps upon Parnassus. Here was the human race in innocence; here evermore was Spring, and every fruit; this is the nectar of which each one speaks. Dante then turns back wholly round unto his Poets, Virgil and Statius, and sees that with a smile they have been listening to these closing words. The Earthly Paradise, then, is not merely a physical location but the archetype of the Golden Age, a state of perfect harmony between humanity and nature that existed before the Fall and that the ancient poets, through their art, dimly perceived. This revelation confirms that the journey through Purgatory has not only cleansed Dante of sin but has restored him to a condition of original innocence, making him fit to meet Beatrice and ascend to the heavens.

The Prelude to the Triumph of the Church

After Matilda's discourse, she continues singing like an enamoured lady, and Dante follows her along the bank. A sudden lustre runs across the forest, and a delicious melody fills the luminous air. Dante rebukes the hardihood of Eve, who could not endure to stay under any veil, for had she stayed devoutly, he would have sooner tasted those ineffable delights. Then, in front of them, the air becomes like an enkindled fire, and a sweet sound as singing is heard. Seven trees of gold appear, which Dante apprehends to be candlesticks, and from the voices of the song "Hosanna!" Above them flamed the harness beautiful, far brighter than the moon in the serene of midnight. This procession, which includes the twenty-four elders, the four animals, the Griffin-drawn chariot, and the three theological and four cardinal virtues, constitutes the Triumph of the Church, the allegorical pageant that will culminate in the appearance of Beatrice. The Earthly Paradise, therefore, is the stage for this revelation, the place where the Church's history and its ultimate destiny are symbolically enacted before Dante's eyes.