The spiritual body and the glorified earthly body. ↩︎
Christ and the Virgin Mary. Butler, Lives of the Saints, VIII 173, says:—
“It is a traditionary pious belief, that the body of the Blessed Virgin was raised by God soon after her death, and assumed to glory, by a singular privilege, before the general resurrection of the dead. This is mentioned by the learned Andrew of Crete in the East, in the seventh, and by St. Gregory of Tours in the West, in the sixth century. … So great was the respect and veneration of the fathers towards this most holy and most exalted of all pure creatures, that St. Epiphanius durst not affirm that she ever died, because he had never found any mention of her death, and because she might have been preserved immortal, and translated to glory without dying.”
By the sacred trio of St. Peter, St. James, and St. John. ↩︎
Because his eyes were so blinded by the splendor of the beloved disciple. Speaking of St. John, Claudius, the German poet, says:—
“It delights me most of all to read in John: there is in him something so entirely wonderful—twilight and night, and through it the swiftly darting lightning—a soft evening cloud, and behind the cloud the broad full moon bodily; something so deeply, sadly pensive, so high, so full of anticipation, that one cannot have enough of it. In reading John it is always with me as though I saw him before me, lying on the bosom of his Master at the last supper: as though his angel were holding the light for me, and in certain passages would fall upon my neck and whisper something in mine ear. I am far from understanding all I read, but it often seems to me as if what John meant were floating before in the distance; and even when I look into a passage altogether dark, I have a foretaste of some great, glorious meaning, which I shall one day understand, and for this reason I grasp so eagerly after every new interpretation of the Gospel of John. Indeed, most of them only play upon the edge of the evening cloud, and the moon behind it has quiet rest.”
The Heaven of the Fixed Stars continued. St. John examines Dante on Charity, in the sense of Love, as in Milton, Paradise Lost, XII 583:—
“Love,
By name to come called Charity.”
Ananias, the disciple at Damascus, whose touch restored the sight of Saul. Acts 9:17:—
“And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house, and putting his hands on him, said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou earnest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales; and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.”
God is the beginning and end of all my love. ↩︎
The commentators differ as to which of the philosophers Dante here refers; whether to Aristotle, Plato, or Pythagoras. ↩︎
The angels. ↩︎
Exodus 33:19:—
“And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee.”
John 1:1:—
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, … full of grace and truth.”
By all the dictates of human reason and divine authority. ↩︎
In Christian art the eagle is the symbol of St. John, indicating his more fervid imagination and deeper insight into divine mysteries. Sometimes even the saint was represented with the head and feet of an eagle, and the hands and body of a man. ↩︎
All living creatures. ↩︎
Isaiah 6:3:—
“As one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
The soul of Adam. ↩︎
“Tell me, of what age was Adam when he was created?” is one of the questions in the Anglo-Saxon “Dialogue between Saturn and Solomon”; and the answer is, “I tell thee, he was thirty winters old.” And Buti says:—
“He was created of the age of thirty-three, or thereabout; and therefore the author says that Adam alone was created by God in perfect age and stature, and no other man.”
And Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, § 39:—
“Some divines count Adam thirty years old at his creation, because they suppose him created in the perfect age and stature of man.”
Stehelin, Traditions of the Jews, I 16, quotes Rabbi Eliezer as saying “that the first man reached from the earth to the firmament of heaven; but that, after he had sinned, God laid his hands on him and reduced him to a less size.” And Rabbi Salomon writes, that “when he lay down, his head was in the east and his feet in the west.” ↩︎
Parhelion is an imperfect image of the sun, formed by reflection in the clouds. All things are such faint reflections of the Creator; but he is the reflection of none of them.
Buti interprets the passage differently, giving to the word pareglio the meaning of ricettacolo, receptacle. ↩︎
In Limbo, longing for Paradise, where the only punishment is to live in desire, but without hope. Inferno IV 41:—
“Lost are we, and are only so far punished,
That without hope we live on in desire.”
Most of the Oriental languages claim the honor of being the language spoken by Adam in Paradise. Juan Bautista de Erro claims it for the Basque, or Vascongada. See Alphabet of Prim. Lang. of Spain, Pt. II Ch. 2, Erving’s Tr. ↩︎
See Canto XVI 79:—
“All things of yours have their mortality,
Even as yourselves.”
Dante, De Volgari Eloquio, I Ch. 4, says, speaking of Adam:—
“What was the first word he spake will, I doubt not, readily suggest itself to every one of sound mind as being what God is, namely, El, either in the way of question or of answer.”
The word used by Matthew 27:46, is Eli, and by Mark 15:34, Eloi, which Dante assumes to be of later use than El. There is, I believe, no authority for this. El is God; Eli, or Eloi, my God. ↩︎
Horace, “Ars Poet.,” 60:—
“As the woods change their leaves in autumn, and the earliest fall, so the ancient words pass away, and the new flourish in the freshness of youth. … Many that now have fallen shall spring up again, and others fall which now are held in honor, if usage wills, which is the judge, the law, and the rule of language.”
The mount of Purgatory, on whose summit was the Terrestrial Paradise. ↩︎
The sixth hour is noon in the old way of reckoning; and at noon the sun has completed one quarter or quadrant of the arc of his revolution, and changes to the next. The hour which is second to the sixth, is the hour which follows it, or one o’clock. This gives seven hours for Adam’s stay in Paradise; and so says Peter Comestor (Dante’s Peter Mangiador) in his ecclesiastical history.
The Talmud, as quoted by Stehelin, Tradition of the Jews, I 20, gives the following account:—
“The day has twelve hours. In the first hour the dust of which Adam was formed was brought together. In the second, this dust was made a rude, unshapely mass. In the third, the limbs were stretched out. In the fourth, a soul was lodged in it. In the fifth, Adam stood upon his feet. In the sixth, he assigned the names of all things that were created. In the seventh, he received Eve for his consort. In the eighth, two went to bed and four rose out of it; the begetting and birth of two children in that time, namely, Cain and his sister. In the ninth, he was forbid to eat of the fruit of the tree. In the tenth, he disobeyed. In the eleventh, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced. In the twelfth, he was banished, or driven out of the garden.”
The Heaven of the Fixed Stars continued. The anger of St. Peter; and the ascent to the Primum Mobile, or Crystalline Heaven.
Dante, Convito, II 15, makes this crystalline Heaven the symbol of Moral Philosophy. He says:—
“The Crystalline Heaven, which has previously been called the Primum Mobile, has a very manifest resemblance to Moral Philosophy; for Moral Philosophy, as Thomas says in treating of the second book of the Ethics, directs us to the other sciences. For, as the Philosopher says in the fifth of the Ethics, legal justice directs us to learn the sciences, and orders them to be learned and mastered, so that they may not be abandoned; so this heaven directs with its movement the daily revolutions of all the others, by which daily they all receive here below the virtue of all their parts. For if its revolution did not thus direct, little of their virtues would reach here below, and little of their sight. Hence, supposing it were possible for this ninth heaven to stand still, the third part of heaven would not be seen in each part of the earth; and Saturn would be hidden from each part of the earth fourteen years and a half; and Jupiter, six years; and Mars, almost a year; and the Sun, one hundred and eighty-two days and fourteen hours (I say days, that is, so much time as so many days would measure); and Venus and Mercury would conceal and show themselves nearly as the Sun; and the Moon would be hidden from all people for the space of fourteen days and a half. Truly there would be here below no production, nor life of animals, nor plants; there would be neither night, nor day, nor week, nor month, nor year; but the whole universe would be deranged, and the movement of the stars in vain. And not otherwise, were Moral Philosophy to cease, the other sciences would be for a time concealed, and there would be no production, nor life of felicity, and in vain would be the writings or discoveries of antiquity. Wherefore it is very manifest that this heaven bears a resemblance to Moral Philosophy.”
Without desire for more. ↩︎
St. Peter, St. James, St. John, and Adam. ↩︎
If the white planet Jupiter should become as red as Mars. ↩︎
Pope Boniface VIII, who won his way to the Popedom by intrigue. See note 49, and note 270. ↩︎
The Vatican hill, to which the body of St. Peter was transferred from the catacombs. ↩︎
Luke 23:44:—
“And there was darkness over all the earth. … And the sun was darkened.”
Linus was the immediate successor of St. Peter as Bishop of Rome, and Cletus of Linus. They were both martyrs of the first age of the Church. ↩︎
Sixtus and Pius were Popes and martyrs of the second age of the Church; Calixtus and Urban, of the third. ↩︎
On the right hand of the Pope the favored Guelfs, and on the left the persecuted Ghibellines. ↩︎
The Papal banner, on which are the keys of St. Peter. ↩︎
The wars against the Ghibellines in general, and particularly that waged against the Colonna family, ending in the destruction of Palestrina. Inferno XXVIL 85:—
“But he, the Prince of the new Pharisees,
Having a war near unto Lateran,
And not with Saracens nor with the Jews,
For each one of his enemies was Christian,
And none of them had been to conquer Acre,
Nor merchandising in the Sultan’s land.”
The sale of indulgences, stamped with the Papal seal, bearing the head of St. Peter. ↩︎
Matthew 7:15:—
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
Psalm 44:23:—
“Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?”
Clement V of Gascony, made Pope in 1305, and John XXII of Cahors in France, in 1316. Buti makes the allusion more general:—
“They of Cahors and Gascony are preparing to drink the blood of the martyrs, because they were preparing to be Popes, cardinals, archbishops and bishops, and prelates in the Church of God, that is built with the blood of the martyrs.”
Dante alludes elsewhere to this intervention of Providence to save the Roman Empire by the hand of Scipio. Convito, IV 5, he says:—
“Is not the hand of God visible, when in the war with Hannibal, having lost so many citizens, that three bushels of rings were carried to Africa, the Romans would have abandoned the land, if that blessed youth Scipio had not undertaken the expedition to Africa, to secure its freedom?”
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Boccaccio, “Ninfale d’ Ameto,” describing a battle between two flocks of swans, says the spectators “saw the air full of feathers, as when the nurse of Jove [Amalthaea, the Goat] holds Apollo, the white snow is seen to fall in flakes.”
And Whittier, Snowbound:—
“Unwarmed by any sunset light,
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag wavering to and fro
Crossed and recrossed the winged snow.”
When the sun is in Capricorn; that is, from the middle of December to the middle of January. ↩︎
The spirits described in Canto XXII 131, as
“The triumphant throng
That comes rejoicing through this rounded ether,”
and had remained behind when Christ and the Virgin Mary ascended. ↩︎
Till his sight could follow them no more, on account of the exceeding vastness of the space between. ↩︎
Canto XXII 133. ↩︎
The first climate is the torrid zone, the first from the equator. From midst to end, is from the meridian to the horizon. Dante had been, then, six hours in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars; for, as Milton says, Paradise Lost, V 580:—
“Time, though in eternity, applied
To motion, measures all things durable
By present, past, and future.”
Being now in the meridian of the Straits of Gibraltar, Dante sees to the westward of Cadiz the sea Ulysses sailed, when he turned his stern unto the morning and made his oars wings for his mad flight, as described in Inferno XXVI. ↩︎
Eastward he almost sees the Phoenician coast; almost, and not quite, because, say the commentators, it was already night there. ↩︎
Europa, daughter of King Agenor, borne to the island of Crete on the back of Jupiter, who had taken the shape of a bull.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, II, Addison’s Tr.:—
“Agenor’s royal daughter, as she played
Among the fields, the milk-white bull surveyed,
And viewed his spotless body with delight,
And at a distance kept him in her sight.
At length she plucked the rising flowers, and fed
The gentle beast, and fondly stroked his head.
⋮
Till now grown wanton and devoid of fear,
Not knowing that she pressed the Thunderer,
She placed herself upon his back, and rode
O’er fields and meadows, seated on the god.“He gently marched along, and by degrees
Left the dry meadow, and approached the seas;
Where now he dips his hoofs and wets his thighs,
Now plunges in, and carries off the prize.”
The sun was in Aries, two signs in advance of Gemini, in which Dante then was. ↩︎
Purgatorio XXXI 49:—
“Never to thee presented art or nature
Pleasure so great as the fair limbs wherein
I was enclosed, which scattered are in earth.”
The Gemini, or Twins, are Castor and Pollux, the sons of Leda. And as Jupiter, their father, came to her in the shape of a swan, this sign of the zodiac is called the nest of Leda. Dante now mounts up from the Heaven of the Fixed Stars to the Primum Mobile, or Crystalline Heaven. ↩︎
Dante’s desire to know in what part of this heaven he was. ↩︎
All the other heavens have their Regents or Intelligences. See Notes 1240. But the Primum Mobile has the Divine Mind alone. ↩︎
By that precinct Dante means the Empyrean, which embraces the Primum Mobile, as that does all the other heavens below it. ↩︎
The half of ten is five, and the fifth is two. The product of these, when multiplied together, is ten. ↩︎
Wordsworth, “Intimations of Immortality”:—
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.”
Aurora, daughter of Hyperion, or the Sun. Purgatorio II 7:—
“So that the white and the vermilion cheeks
Of beautiful Aurora, where I was,
By too great age were changing into orange.”
Or, perhaps, to steer, and
“Over the high seas to keep
The barque of Peter to its proper bearings.”
This neglected centesimal was the omission of some inconsiderable fraction or centesimal part, in the computation of the year according to the Julian calendar, which was corrected in the Gregorian, some two centuries and a half after Dante’s death. By this error, in a long lapse of time, the months would cease to correspond to the seasons, and January be no longer a winter, but a spring month.
Sir John Herschel, Treatise on Astronomy, Ch. XIII, says:—
“The Julian rule made every fourth year, without exception, a bissextile. This is, in fact, an over-correction; it supposes the length of the tropical year to be 365¼ d., which is too great, and thereby induces an error of 7 days in 900 years, as will easily appear on trial. Accordingly, so early as the year 1414, it began to be perceived that the equinoxes were gradually creeping away from the 21st of March and September, where they ought to have always fallen had the Julian year been exact, and happening (as it appeared) too early. The necessity of a fresh and effectual reform in the calendar was from that time continually urged, and at length admitted. The change (which took place under the Popedom of Gregory XIII) consisted in the omission of ten nominal days after the 4th of October, 1582 (so that the next day was called the 15th, and not the 5th), and the promulgation of the rule already explained for future regulation.”
It will appear from the verse of Dante, that this error and its consequences had been noticed a century earlier than the year mentioned by Herschel. Dante speaks ironically; naming a very long period, and meaning a very short one. ↩︎
Dante here refers either to the reforms he expected from the Emperor Henry VII, or to those he as confidently looked for from Can Grande della Scala, the Veltro, or greyhound, of Inferno I 101, who was to slay the she-wolf, and make her “perish in her pain,” and whom he so warmly eulogizes in Canto XVII of the Paradiso. Alas for the vanity of human wishes! Patient Italy has waited more than five centuries for the fulfilment of this prophecy, but at length she has touched the bones of her prophet, and “is revived and stands upon her feet.” ↩︎
The Primum Mobile, or Crystalline Heaven, continued. ↩︎
Milton, Paradise Lost, IV 505:—
“Thus these two,
Imparadised in one another’s arms,
The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill
Of bliss on bliss.”
That Crystalline Heaven, which Dante calls a volume, or scroll, as in Canto XXIII 112:—
“The regal mantle of the volumes all.”
The light of God, represented as a single point, to indicate its unity and indivisibility. ↩︎
Iris, or the rainbow. ↩︎
These nine circles of fire are the nine Orders of Angels in the three Celestial Hierarchies. Dante, Convito II 16, says that the Holy Church divides the Angels into, “three Hierarchies, that is to say, three holy or divine Principalities; and each Hierarchy has three Orders; so that the Church believes and affirms nine Orders of spiritual beings. The first is that of the Angels; the second, that of the Archangels; the third, that of the Thrones. And these three Orders form the first Hierarchy; not first in reference to rank nor creation (for the others are more noble, and all were created together), but first in reference to our ascent to their height. Then follow the Dominions; next the Virtues; then the Principalities; and these form the second Hierarchy. Above these are the Powers, and the Cherubim, and above all are the Seraphim; hese form the third Hierarchy.”
It will be observed that this arrangement of the several Orders does not agree with that followed in the poem. ↩︎
Barlow, Study of the Divina Commedia, p. 533, remarks:—
“Within a circle of ineffable joy, circumscribed only by light and love, a point of intense brightness so dazzled the eyes of Dante that he could not sustain the sight of it. Around this vivid centre, from which the heavens and all nature depend, nine concentric circles of the Celestial Hierarchy revolved with a velocity inversely proportioned to their distance from it, the nearer circles moving more rapidly, the remoter ones less. The poet at first is surprised at this, it being the reverse of the relative movement, from the same source of propulsion, of the heavens themselves around the earth as their centre. But the infallible Beatrice assures him that this difference arises, in fact, from the same cause, proximity to the Divine presence, which in the celestial spheres is greater the farther they are from the centre, but in the circles of angels, on the contrary, it is greater the nearer they are to it.”
Because the subject has not been investigated and discussed. ↩︎
The nine heavens are here called corporal circles, as we call the stars the heavenly bodies. Latimer says:—
“A corporal heaven, … where the stars are.”
The Primum Mobile, in which Dante and Beatrice now are. ↩︎
The nearer God the circle is, so much greater virtue it possesses. Hence the outermost of the heavens, revolving round the earth, corresponds to the innermost of the Orders of Angels revolving round God, and is controlled by it as its Regent or Intelligence. To make this more intelligible I will repeat here the three Triads of Angels, and the heavens of which they are severally the Intelligences, as already given in note 1240.
| The Seraphim, | Primum Mobile. |
| The Cherubim, | The Fixed Stars. |
| The Thrones, | Saturn. |
| The Dominions, | Jupiter. |
| The Virtues, | Mars. |
| The Powers, | The Sun. |
| The Principalities, | Venus. |
| The Archangels, | Mercury. |
| The Angels, | The Moon. |
Aeneid, XII 365, Davidson’s Tr.:—
“As when the blast of Thracian Boreas roars on the Aegean Sea, and to the shore pursues the waves, wherever the winds exert their incumbent force, the clouds fly through the air.”
Each of the four winds blows three different blasts; either directly in front, or from the right cheek, or the left. According to Boccaccio, the northeast wind in Italy is milder than the northwest. ↩︎
Dante uses this comparison before, Canto I 60:—
“But I beheld it sparkle round about
Like iron that comes molten from the fire.”
The inventor of the game of chess brought it to a Persian king, who was so delighted with it, that he offered him in return whatever reward he might ask. The inventor said he wished only a grain of wheat, doubled as many times as there were squares on the chessboard; that is, one grain for the first square, two for the second, four for the third, and so on to sixty-four. This the king readily granted; but when the amount was reckoned up, he had not wheat enough in his whole kingdom to pay it. ↩︎
Their appointed place or whereabout. ↩︎
Thomas Aquinas, the Doctor Angelicas of the Schools, treats the subject of Angels at great length in the first volume of his Summa Theologica, from Quaest. L to LXIV, and from Quaest. CVI to CXIV. He constantly quotes Dionysius, sometimes giving his exact words, but oftener amplifying and interpreting his meaning. In Quaest. CVIII he discusses the names of the Angels, and of the Seraphim and Cherubim speaks as follows:—
“The name of Seraphim is not given from love alone, but from excess of love, which the name of heat or burning implies. Hence Dionysius (Cap. VII Coel. Hier., a princ.) interprets the name Seraphim according to the properties of fire, in which is excess of heat. In fire, however, we may consider three things. First, a certain motion which is upward, and which is continuous; by which is signified, that they are unchangingly moving towards God. Secondly, its active power, which is heat; … and by this is signified the influence of this kind of Angels, which they exercise powerfully on those beneath them, exciting them to a sublime fervor, and thoroughly purifying them by burning. Thirdly, in fire its brightness must be considered; and this signifies that such Angels have within themselves an inextinguishable light, and that they perfectly illuminate others.
“In the same way the name of Cherubim is given from a certain excess of knowledge; hence it is interpreted plenitudo scientiae; which Dionysius (Cap. VII Coel. Hier., a princ.) explains in four ways: first, as perfect vision of God; secondly, full reception of divine light; thirdly, that in God himself they contemplate the beauty of the order of things emanating from God; fourthly, that, being themselves full of this kind of knowledge, they copiously pour it out upon others.”
The love of God, which holds them fast to this central point as with a band. Job 38:31:—
“Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?”
Canto IX 61:—
“Above us there are mirrors, Thrones you call them,
From which shines out on us God Judicant.”
Of the Thrones, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, CVIII 5, says:—
“The Order of Thrones excels the inferior Orders in this, that it has the power of perceiving immediately in God the reasons of the Divine operations. … Dionysius (Cap. VII Coel. Hier.) explains the name of Thrones from their resemblance to material chairs, in which four things are to be considered. First, in reference to position, because chairs are raised above the ground; and thus these Angels, which are called Thrones, are raised so far that they can perceive immediately in God the reasons of things. Secondly, in material chairs firmness must be considered, because one sits firmly in them; but this is e converso, for the Angels themselves are made firm by God. Thirdly, because the chair receives the sitter, and he can be carried in it; and thus the Angels receive God in themselves, and in a certain sense carry him to their inferiors. Fourthly, from their shape, because the chair is open on one side, to receive the sitter; and thus these Angels, by their promptitude, are open to receive God and to serve him.”
Dante, Convito, I 1, says:—
“Knowlege is the ultimate perfection of our soul, in which consists our ultimate felicity.”
It was one of the great questions of the Schools, whether the beatitude of the soul consisted in knowing or in loving. Thomas Aquinas maintains the former part of this proposition, and Duns Scotus the latter. ↩︎
By the grace of God, and the cooperation of the good will of the recipient. ↩︎
The perpetual spring of Paradise, which knows no falling autumnal leaves, no season in which Aries is a nocturnal sign. ↩︎
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I Quaest. CVIII 6, says:—
“And thus Dionysius (Cap. VII Coel. Hier.), from the names of the Orders inferring the properties thereof, placed in the first Hierarchy those Orders whose names were given them in reference to God, namely, the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; but in the middle Hierarchy he placed those whose names designate a certain common government or disposition, that is, the Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; and in the third Order he placed those whose names designate the execution of the work, namely, the Principalities, Angels, and Archangels. … But to the rule of government three things belong, the first of which is the distinction of the things to be done, which is the province of the Dominions; the second is to provide the faculty of fulfilling, which belongs to the Virtues; but the third is to arrange in what way the things prescribed, or defined, can be fulfilled, so that some one may execute them, and this belongs to the Powers. But the execution of the angelic ministry consists in announcing things divine. In the execution, however, of any act, there are some who begin the act, and lead the others, as in singing the precentors, and in battle those who lead and direct the rest; and this belongs to the Principalities. There are others who simply execute, and this is the part of the Angels. Others hold an intermediate position, which belongs to the Archangels.”
The Athenian convert of St. Paul. Acts 17:34:—
“Howbeit, certain men clave unto him, and believed; among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite.”
Dante places him among the theologians in the Heaven of the Sun. See Canto X 115:—
“Near by behold the lustre of that taper,
Which in the flesh below looked most within
The angelic nature and its ministry.”
To Dionysius was attributed a work, called The Celestial Hierarchy, which is the great storehouse of all that relates to the nature and operations of Angels. Venturi calls him “the false Areopagite”; and Dalbaeus, De Script. Dion. Areop., says that this work was not known till the sixth century.
The Legenda Aurea confounds St. Dionysius the Areopagite with St. Denis, Bishop of Paris in the third century, and patron saint of France. It says he was called the Areopagite from the quarter where he lived; that he was surnamed Theosoph, or the Wise in God; that he was converted, not by the preaching of St. Paul, but by a miracle the saint wrought in restoring a blind man to sight; and that “the woman named Damaris,” who was converted with him, was his wife. It quotes from a letter of his to Polycarp, written from Egypt, where he was with his friend and fellow-student Apollophanes, and where he witnessed the darkening of the sun at the Crucifixion:—
“We were both at Heliopolis, when suddenly we saw the moon conceal the surface of the sun, though this was not the time for an eclipse, and this darkness continued for three hours, and the light returned at the ninth hour and lasted till evening.”
And finally it narrates, that when Dionysius was beheaded, in Paris, where he had converted many souls and built many churches, “straightway the body arose, and, taking its head in its arms, led by an angel, and surrounded by a celestial light, carried it a distance of two miles, from a place called the Mount of Martyrs, to the place where it now reposes.”
For an account of the Celestial Hierarchy, see note 1443. ↩︎
St. Gregory differed from St. Dionysius in the arrangement of the Orders, placing the Principalities in the second triad, and the Virtues in the third. ↩︎
St. Paul, who, 2 Corinthians 12:4, “was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” ↩︎
The Primum Mobile, or Crystalline Heaven, continued.
The children of Latona are Apollo and Diana, the Sun and Moon. ↩︎
When the Sun is in Aries and the Moon in Libra, and when the Sun is setting and the full Moon rising, so that they are both on the horizon at the same time. ↩︎
So long as they remained thus equipoised, as if in the opposite scales of an invisible balance suspended from the zenith. ↩︎
God, whom Dante could not look upon, even as reflected in the eyes of Beatrice. ↩︎
What Dante wishes to know is, where, when, and how the Angels were created. ↩︎
Every When and every Where. ↩︎
Dante, Convito, III 14, defines splendor as “reflected light.” Here it means the creation; the reflected light of God.
Job 38:7:—
“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”
And again, 35:—
“Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?”
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I Quaest. LXI 3:—
“The angelic nature was made before the creation of time, and after eternity.”
In the creation of the Angels. Some editions read nove Amori, the nine Loves, or nine choirs of Angels. ↩︎
Genesis 1:2:—
“And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
Pure Matter, or the elements; pure Form, or the Angels; and the two conjoined, the human race.
Form, in the language of the Schools, and as defined by Thomas Aquinas, is the principle “by which we first think, whether it be called intellect, or intellectual soul.” See note 1260. ↩︎