Dante's Image of Fortune

"Master," I said, "Now, tell me
What is this Fortune that you mention,
What is it that holds the goods of the world in its jaws?"

And he said to me, "Oh, foolish people,
How much vain ignorance is that which offends you!
Now feed on what I have to say:

He whose knowledge transcends all
Made the celestial spheres and provided them each with one to guide them
So that every part irradiates every other part

Distributing equally the light.
Likewise, to govern the splendors of the world,
He ordered a general minister and governor

Who would transfer from time to time the vain goods of the world
From people to people, and from race to race
Beyond the capacity for human understanding

So that first one, then another people would prevail and then languish,
According to the judgement of she
Who is hidden, like a snake in the grass.

Your knowledge cannot be compared to hers:
She foresees, judges and conducts
Her reign as the other gods do theirs.

Her changes have no cease;
Necessity makes her swift
So that it often happenst that people change their situations

This is she who is so much criticized
By the very people who should praise her
Who instead blame her wrongly and falsely.

But she is blessed and does not hear:
Happy with the other first creations
She turns her wheel and enjoys herself ."

Inferno, VII, ll. 67-96, my translation

The theme of Canto VII is the insatiable desire for wealth and possessions as Dante and his guide Vergil visit the circle of the wasters and the avaricious. In response to a question from the pilgrim Dante, Vergil explains Fortune as an angelic minister charged by God with the administration of earthly goods in the same way that each of the nine crystalline spheres has a ruling spirit. Fortune's governance of earthly goods, determined ultimately by God, is inaccessible to human intelligence and often contrary to human will, but in the same way that the ninth and final sphere was that of the first mover, which caused all the other spheres to move with it, Fortune is governed by God. The doctrinal basis for Dante's conception of Fortune can be found in Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, IV.6 and in the Civitate Dei, V.9.

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