Where is his fault, if he do not believe?'"
(XIX, 70.)

The question is answered both directly and indirectly. The exclusion of
the virtuous pagan from Heaven is assumed to be an act of injustice "but
who art thou who wouldst set upon the seat to judge at a thousand miles
away with the short sight that carries but a span?" (XIX, 79.) As our
very idea of justice comes from God all just and all wise, that thought
ought to assure us that not even the virtuous heathen will be excluded
from Heaven. Faith indeed is required for salvation, but many having
faith will be condemned, while many seemingly without it will be
admitted into Heaven.

"But look thou, many crying are, 'Christ, Christ'!
Who at the judgment will be far less near
To him than some shall be who knew not Christ.
Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn
When the two companies shall be divided,
The one forever rich, the other poor."
(XIX, 106.)

The indirect answer to Dante's objection as to the exclusion of the
virtuous heathen from Heaven is given by the poet speaking through the
beak of the Eagle and showing in this Heaven as one of the lights of the
Eagle itself, the soul of Rhipeus mentioned by AEneas "as above all
others the most just among the Trojans and the strictest observer of
right." "So now," says Benvenuto, the fourteenth century lecturer on
Dante, "our author fitly introduces a pagan infidel in the person of
Rhipeus, of whose salvation there would seem the very slightest chance
of all; by reason of the time, so many centuries before the advent of
Christ; by reason of the place, for he was of Troy where exceeding pride
was then paramount; by reason of the sect, for he was a pagan and
gentile, not a Jew. Briefly then our author wishes us to gather from
this fiction--this conclusion,--that even such a pagan of whose
salvation no one hoped, is capable of salvation."

In the Heaven of Saturn, Beatrice tells the poet that she does not smile
out of regard for his human vision not powerful enough to sustain her
excess of beauty. The lovely symphonies of Paradise are also silent for
the same reason. This in effect is a poetical way of saying that the
bliss and glory in Saturn are greater than any beatitude in the lower
spheres.

This seventh Heaven is the Heaven where appear saints distinguished for
contemplation, the principle representatives being St. Peter Damian and
St. Benedict. The latter wrote a treatise