Paul

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Paul is recalled by Dante in the eighteenth canto of Paradise, where Cacciaguida, turning to the pilgrim, includes him among those who «died» for the faith together with Peter, with an expression that makes him an example of devotion to the Christian cause. The authorized notes to the second canto of the Inferno identify this same Paul as the apostle Saint Paul, designated by Scripture as the «chosen vessel» (Acts of the Apostles 9, 15), and specify his historical function: to bring «comfort» to the nascent faith, that is, to consolidate its foundations among men. The same commentary recalls that Paul, unlike Aeneas, is not said to have descended bodily into the afterlife, because he himself leaves the matter uncertain in 2 Corinthians 12, 3, and that Dante, on the threshold of the poem, solemnly recalls the two central moments of the history of the world – the Aeneid and the Bible – of which Aeneas and Paul are respectively witnesses. The Paradiso mention fits into this perspective, summing up the two public tasks within the horizon of Dante's third journey.