The Divine Comedy, Endnotes 2,001–2,109

Endnotes 2,001⁠–⁠2,109

Genesis 1:31:—

“And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

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The Angels. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I Quaest. L 2, says:—

“Form is act. Therefore whatever is form alone, is pure act.”

For his definition of form, see note 2006. ↩︎
Pure matter, which is passive and only possesses potentiality, or power of assuming various forms when united with mind.

“It is called potentiality,” comments Buti, “because it can receive many forms; and the forms are called act, because they change, and act by changing matter into various forms.”

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The union of the soul and body in man, who occupies the intermediate place between Angels and pure matter. ↩︎
This bond, though suspended by death, will be resumed again at the resurrection, and remain forever. ↩︎
St. Jerome, the greatest of the Latin Fathers of the Church, and author of the translation of the Scriptures known, as the Vulgate, was born of wealthy parents in Dalmatia, in 342. He studied at Rome under the grammarian Donatus, and became a lawyer in that city. At the age of thirty he visited the Holy Land, and, withdrawing from the world, became an anchorite in the desert of Chalcida, on the borders of Arabia. Here he underwent the bodily privations and temptations, and enjoyed the spiritual triumphs, of the hermit’s life. He was “haunted by demons, and consoled by voices and visions from heaven.” In one of his letters, cited by Butler, Lives of the Saints, IX 362, he writes:—

“In the remotest part of a wild and sharp desert, which, being burnt up with the heats of the scorching sun, strikes with horror and terror even the monks that inhabit it, I seemed to myself to be in the midst of the delights and assemblies of Rome. I loved solitude, that in the bitterness of my soul I might more freely bewail my miseries, and call upon my Saviour. My hideous emaciated limbs were covered with sackcloth: my skin was parched dry and black, and my flesh was almost wasted away. The days I passed in tears and groans, and when sleep overpowered me against my will, I cast my wearied bones, which hardly hung together, upon the bare ground, not so properly to give them rest, as to torture myself. I say nothing of my eating and drinking; for the monks in that desert, when they are sick, know no other drink but cold water, and look upon it as sensuality ever to eat anything dressed by fire. In this exile and prison, to which, for the fear of hell, I had voluntarily condemned myself, having no other company but scorpions and wild beasts, I many times found my imagination filled with lively representations of dances in the company of Roman ladies, as if I had been in the midst of them. … I often joined whole nights to the days, crying, sighing, and beating my breast till the desired calm returned. I feared the very cell in which I lived, because it was witness to the foul suggestions of my enemy; and being angry and armed with severity against myself, I went alone into the most secret parts of the wilderness, and if I discovered anywhere a deep valley, or a craggy rock, that was the place of my prayer, there I threw this miserable sack of my body. The same Lord is my witness, that after so many sobs and tears, after having in much sorrow looked long up to heaven, I felt most delightful comforts and interior sweetness; and these so great, that, transported and absorpt, I seemed to myself to be amidst the choirs of angels; and glad and joyful I sung to God: After Thee, O Lord, we will run in the fragrancy of thy celestial ointments.”

In another letter, cited by Montalembert, Monks of the West, Auth. Tr., I 404, he exclaims:—

“O desert, enamelled with the flowers of Christ! O solitude, where those stones are born of which, in the Apocalypse, is built the city of the Great King! O retreat, which rejoicest in the friendship of God! What doest thou in the world, my brother, with thy soul greater than the world? How long wilt thou remain in the shadow of roofs, and in the smoky dungeons of cities? Believe me, I see here more of the light.”

At the end of five years he was driven from his solitude by the persecution of the Eastern monks; and lived successively in Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, Rome, and Alexandria. Finally, in 385, he returned to the Holy Land, and built a monastery at Bethlehem. Here he wrote his translation of the Scriptures, and his Lives of the Fathers of the Desert; but in 416 this monastery, and others that had risen up in its neighborhood, were burned by the Pelagians, and St. Jerome took refuge in a strong tower or fortified castle. Four years afterwards he died, and was buried in the ruins of his monastery. ↩︎
This truth of the simultaneous creation of mind and matter, as stated in line 29. ↩︎
The opinion of St. Jerome and other Fathers of the Church, that the Angels were created long ages before the rest of the universe, is refuted by Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I Quaest. LXI 3. ↩︎
That the Intelligences or Motors of the heavens should be so long without any heavens to move. ↩︎
The subject of the elements is the earth, so called as being the lowest, or underlying the others, fire, air, and water. ↩︎
The pride of Lucifer, who lies at the centre of the earth, towards which all things gravitate, and

“Down upon which thrust all the other rocks.”

Milton, Paradise Lost, V 856, makes the rebel angels deny that they were created by God:—

“Who saw
When this creation was? Rememberest thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
We know no time when we were not as now;
Know none before us; self-begot, self-raised
By our own quickening power, when fatal course
Had circled his full orb, the birth mature
Of this our native heaven, ethereal sons.”

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The merit consists in being willing to receive this grace. ↩︎
St. Chrysostom, who in his preaching so carried away his audiences that they beat the pavement with their swords and called him the “Thirteenth Apostle,” in one of his Homilies thus upbraids the custom of applauding the preacher:—

“What do your praises advantage me, when I see not your progress in virtue? Or what harm shall I receive from the silence of my auditors, when I behold the increase of their piety? The praise of the speaker is not the acclamation of his hearers, but their zeal for piety and religion; not their making a great stir in the times of hearing, but their showing diligence at all other times. Applause, as soon as it is out of the mouth, is dispersed into the air, and vanishes; but when the hearers grow better, this brings an incorruptible and immortal reward both to the speaker and the hearer. The praise of your acclamation may render the orator more illustrious here, but the piety of your souls will give him greater confidence before the tribunal of Christ. Therefore, if any one love the preacher, or if any preacher love his people, let him not be enamored with applause, but with the benefit of the hearers.”

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Lapo is the abbreviation of Jacopo, and Bindi of Aldobrandi, both familiar names in Florence. ↩︎
Milton, “Lycidas,” 113:—

“How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as for their bellies sake
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make,
Than how to scramble at the shearers feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest!
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman’s art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw:
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed;
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said:
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.”

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Cowper, “Task,” II:—

“He that negotiates between God and man,
As God’s ambassador, the grand concerns
Of judgment and of mercy, should beware
Of lightness in his speech. ’Tis pitiful
To court a grin, when you should woo a soul;
To break a jest, when pity would inspire
Pathetic exhortation; and t’ address
The skittish fancy with facetious tales,
When sent with God’s commission to the heart!”

For a specimen of the style of popular preachers in the Middle Ages, see the story of Frate Cipolla, in the Decameron, Gior. VI Nov. 10. See also Scheible’s Kloster, and Menin’s Predicatoriana. ↩︎
The Devil, who is often represented in early Christian art under the shape of a coal-black bird. See Didron, Christian Iconography, I. ↩︎
In early paintings the swine is the symbol of St. Anthony, as the cherub is of St. Matthew, the lion of St. Mark, and the eagle of St. John. There is an old tradition that St. Anthony was once a swineherd. Brand, Pop. Antiquities, I 358, says:—

“In the World of Wonders is the following translation of an epigram:—

‘Once fed’st thou, Anthony, an heard of swine,
And now an heard of monkes thou feedest still:—
For wit and gut, alike both charges bin:
Both loven filth alike; both like to fill
Their greedy paunch alike. Nor was that kind
More beastly, sottish, swinish than this last.
All else agrees: one fault I onely find,
Thou feedest not thy monkes with oken mast.’

“The author mentions before, persons ‘who runne up and downe the country, crying, Have you anything to bestow upon my lord S. Anthonie’s swine?’ ”

Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, II 380, remarks:—

“I have read somewhere that the hog is given to St. Anthony, because he had been a swineherd, and cured the diseases of swine. This is quite a mistake. The hog was the representative of the demon of sensuality and gluttony, which Anthony is supposed to have vanquished by the exercises of piety and by divine aid. The ancient custom of placing in all his effigies a black pig at his feet, or under his feet, gave rise to the super stition that this unclean animal was especially dedicated to him, and under his protection. The monks of the Order of St. Anthony kept herds of consecrated pigs, which were allowed to feed at the public charge, and which it was a profanation to steal or kill: hence the proverb about the fatness of a ‘Tantony pig.’ ”

Halliwell, Dict. of Arch. and Prov. Words, has the following definition:—

“Anthony-Pig. The favorite or smallest pig of the litter. A Kentish expression, according to Grose. ‘To follow like a tantony pig,’ i.e. to follow close at one’s heels. Some derive this saying from a privilege enjoyed by the friars of certain convents in England and France, sons of St. Anthony, whose swine were permitted to feed in the streets. These swine would follow any one having greens or other provisions, till they obtained some of them; and it was in those days considered an act of charity and religion to feed them. St. Anthony was invoked for the pig.”

Mr. Howells, Venetian Life, p. 341, alludes to the same custom as once prevalent in Italy:—

“Among other privileges of the Church, abolished in Venice long ago, was that ancient right of the monks of St. Anthony Abbot, by which their herds of swine were made free of the whole city. These animals, enveloped in an odor of sanctity, wandered here and there, and were piously fed by devout people, until the year 1409, when, being found dangerous to children, and inconvenient to everybody, they were made the subject of a special decree, which deprived them of their freedom of movement. The Republic was always opposing and limiting the privileges of the Church!”

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Giving false indulgences, without the true stamp upon them, in return for the alms received. ↩︎
The nature of the Angels. ↩︎
Daniel 7:10:—

“Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.”

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That irradiates this angelic nature. ↩︎
The splendors are the reflected lights, or the Angels. ↩︎
The fervor of the Angels is proportioned to their capacity of receiving the divine light. ↩︎
The ascent to the Empyrean, the tenth and last Heaven. Of this Heaven, Dante, Convito, II 4, says:—

“This is the sovereign edifice of the world, in which the whole world is included, and outside of which nothing is. And it is not in space, but was formed solely in the primal Mind, which the Greeks call Protonoe. This is that magnificence of which the Psalmist spake, when he says to God, ‘Thy magnificence is exalted above the heavens.’ ”

Milton, Paradise Lost, III 56:—

“Now had the Almighty Father from above,
From the pure empyrean where he sits
High throned above all highth, bent down his eye,
His own works and their works at once to view.
About him all the sanctities of heaven
Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received
Beatitude past utterance.”

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The sixth hour is noon, and when noon is some six thousand miles away from us, the dawn is approaching, the shadow of the earth lies almost on a plane with it, and gradually the stars disappear. ↩︎
The nine circles of Angels, described in Canto XXVIII. ↩︎
From the Crystalline Heaven to the Empyrean. Dante, Convito, II 15, makes the Empyrean the symbol of Theology, the Divine Science:—

“The Empyrean Heaven, by its peace, resembles the Divine Science, which is full of all peace; and which suffers no strife of opinions or sophistical arguments, because of the exceeding certitude of its subject, which is God. And of this he says to his disciples, ‘My peace I give unto you; my peace I leave you’; giving and leaving them his doctrine, which is this science of which I speak. Of this Solomon says: ‘There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number; my dove, my undefiled, is but one.’ All sciences he calls queens and paramours and virgins; and this he calls a dove, because it is without blemish of strife; and this he calls perfect, because it makes us perfectly to see the truth in which our soul has rest.”

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Philippians 4:7:—

“The peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”

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The Angels and the souls of the saints. ↩︎
The Angels will be seen in the same aspect after the last judgment as before; but the souls of the saints will wear “the twofold garments,” spoken of in Canto XXV 92, the spiritual body, and the glorified earthly body. ↩︎
Daniel 7:10:—

“A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him.”

And Revelation 22:1:—

“And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

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The sparks are Angels, and the flowers the souls of the blessed. ↩︎
For the mystic virtues of the ruby, see note 658. ↩︎
For the mystic virtues of the topaz, see note 1584. ↩︎
“By the length,” says Venturi, “was represented the outpouring of God upon his creatures; by the roundness, the return of this outpouring to God, as to its first source and ultimate end.”

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Dante repeats the word vidi, I saw, three times, as a rhyme, to express the intenseness of his vision. ↩︎
Buti thinks that this light is the Holy Ghost; Philalethes, that it is the Logos, or second person of the Trinity; Tommaseo, that it is Illuminating Grace. ↩︎
Didron, Christian Iconography, I 234, says:—

“It was in the centre, at the very heart of this luminous eternity, that the Deity shone forth. Dante no doubt wished to describe one of those roses with a thousand petals, which light the porches of our noblest cathedrals—the rose-windows, which were contemporaneous with the Florentine poet, and which he had no doubt seen in his travels in France. There in fact, in the very depth of the chalice of that rose of colored glass, the Divine Majesty shines out resplendently.”

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The word convent is here used in its original meaning of a coming together, or assembly. ↩︎
The name of Augustus is equivalent to Kaiser, Caesar, or Emperor. In Canto XXXII 119, the Virgin Mary is called Augusta, the Queen of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Empress of “the most just and merciful of empires.” ↩︎
This is Henry of Luxembourg, to whom in 1300 Dante was looking as the regenerator of Italy. He became Emperor in 1308, and died in 1311, ten years before Dante. See note 618, and note 1180. ↩︎
At the Curia Romana, or Papal court. ↩︎
Pope Clement V (1305–1314). See note 272. The allusion here is to his double dealing with Henry of Luxembourg. See note 1685. ↩︎
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Among the Simoniacs in the third round of Malebolge. Of Simon Magus, Milman, History of Latin Christianity, II 97, writes thus:—

“Unless Simon was in fact a personage of considerable importance during the early history of Christianity, it is difficult to account for his becoming, as he is called by Beausobre, the hero of the Romance of Heresy. If Simon was the same with that magician, a Cypriot by birth, who was employed by Felix as agent in his intrigue to detach Drusilla from her husband, this part of his character accords with the charge of licentiousness advanced both against his life and his doctrines by his Christian opponents. This is by no means improbable; and indeed, even if he was not a person thus politically prominent and influential, the early writers of Christianity would scarcely have concurred in representing him as a formidable and dangerous antagonist of the Faith as a kind of personal rival of St. Peter, without some other groundwork for the fiction besides the collision recorded in the Acts. The doctrines which are ascribed to him and to his followers, who continued to exist for several centuries, harmonize with the glimpse of his character and tenets in the writings of St. Luke. Simon probably was one of that class of adventurers which abounded at this period, or like Apollonius of Tyana, and others at a later time, with whom the opponents of Christianity attempted to confound Jesus and his Apostles. His doctrine was Oriental in its language and in its pretensions. He was the first Aeon or emanation, or rather perhaps the first manifestation of the primal Deity. He assumed not merely the title of the Great Power or Virtue of God, but all the other Appellations—the Word, the Perfection, the Paraclete, the Almighty, the whole combined attributes of the Deity. He had a companion, Helena, according to the statement of his enemies, a beautiful prostitute, whom he found at Tyre, who became in like manner the first conception (the Ennoea) of the Deity; but who, by her conjunction with matter, had been enslaved to its malignant influence, and, having fallen under the power of evil angels, had been in a constant state of transmigration, and, among other mortal bodies, had occupied that of the famous Helen of Troy. Beausobre, who elevates Simon into a Platonic philosopher, explains the Helena as a sublime allegory. She was the Psyche of his philosophic romance. The soul, by evil influences, had become imprisoned in matter. By her the Deity had created the angels: the angels, enamored of her, had inextricably entangled her in that polluting bondage, in order to prevent her return to heaven. To fly from their embraces she had passed from body to body. Connecting this fiction with the Grecian mythology, she was Minerva, or impersonated Wisdom; perhaps, also, Helena, or embodied Beauty.”

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Pope Boniface VIII, a native of Alagna, now Anagni. See note 270, and note 925.

Dante has already his punishment prepared. He is to be thrust head downward into a narrow hole in the rock of Malebolge, and to be driven down still lower when Clement V shall follow him. ↩︎
The White Rose of Paradise. ↩︎
Iliad, II 86, Anon. Tr.:—

“And the troops thronged together, as swarms of crowding bees, which come ever in fresh numbers from the hollow rock, and fly in clusters over the vernal flowers, and thickly some fly in this direction, and some in that.”

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The nymph Callisto, or Helice, was changed by Jupiter into the constellation of the Great Bear, and her son into that of the Little Bear. See note 1036. ↩︎
Rome and her superb edifices, before the removal of the Papal See to Avignon. ↩︎
Speaking of Petrarch’s visit to Rome, Mr. Norton, Travel and Study Italy, p. 288, says:—

“The great church of St. John Lateran, ‘the mother and head of all the churches of the city and the world,’—mater urbis et orbis—had been almost destroyed by fire, with its adjoining palace, and the houses of the canons, on the Eve of St. John, in 1308. The palace and the canons houses were rebuilt not long after; but at the time of Petrarch’s latest visit to Rome, and for years afterward, the church was without a roof, and its walls were ruinous. The poet addressed three at least of the Popes at Avignon with urgent appeals that this disgrace should no longer be permitted—but the Popes gave no heed to his words; for the ruin of Roman churches, or of Rome itself, was a matter of little concern to these Transalpine prelates.”

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From the highest regions of the air to the lowest depth of the sea. ↩︎
St. Bernard, the great Abbot of Clairvaux, the “Doctor Mellifluus” of the Church, and preacher of the disastrous Second Crusade, was born of noble parents in the village of Fontaine, near Dijon, in Burgundy, in the year 1190. After studying at Paris, at the age of twenty he entered the Benedictine monastery of Citeaux; and when, five years later, this monastery had become overcrowded with monks, he was sent out to found a new one.

Mrs. Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders, p. 149, says:—

“The manner of going forth on these occasions was strikingly characteristic of the age;—the abbot chose twelve monks, representing the twelve Apostles, and placed at their head a leader, representing Jesus Christ, who, with a cross in his hand, went before them. The gates of the convent opened—then closed behind them—and they wandered into the wide world, trusting in God to show them their destined abode.

“Bernard led his followers to a wilderness, called the Valley of Wormwood, and there, at his biding, arose the since renowned abbey of Clairvaux. They felled the trees, built themselves huts, tilled and sowed the ground, and changed the whole face of the country round; till that which had been a dismal solitude, the resort of wolves and robbers, became a land of vines and corn, rich, populous, and prosperous.”

This incident forms the subject of one of Murillo’s most famous paintings, and is suggestive of the saint’s intense devotion to the Virgin, which Dante expresses in this line.

Mr. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics, I 145, gives the following sketch of St. Bernard:—

“With Bernard the monastic life is the one thing needful. He began life by drawing after him into the convent all his kindred; sweeping them one by one from the high seas of the world with the irresistible vortex of his own religious fervor. His incessant cry for Europe is, Better monasteries, and more of them. Let these ecclesiastical castles multiply; let them cover and command the land, well garrisoned with men of God, and then, despite all heresy and schism, theocracy will flourish, the earth shall yield her increase, and all people praise the Lord. Who so wise as Bernard to win souls for Christ, that is to say, recruits for the cloister? With what eloquence he paints the raptures of contemplation, the vanity and sin of earthly ambition or of earthly love! Wherever in his travels Bernard may have preached, there, presently, exultant monks must open wide their doors to admit new converts. Wherever he goes, he bereaves mothers of their children, the aged of their last solace and last support; praising those the most who leave most misery behind them. How sternly does he rebuke those Rachels who mourn and will not be comforted for children dead to them forever! What vitriol does he pour into the wounds when he asks if they will drag their son down to perdition with themselves by resisting the vocation of Heaven; whether it was not enough that they brought him forth sinful to a world of sin, and will they now, in their insane affection, cast him into the fires of hell? Yet Bernard is not hard-hearted by nature. He can pity this disgraceful weakness of the flesh. He makes such amends as superstition may. I will be a father to him, he says. Alas! cold comfort. You, their hearts will answer, whose flocks are countless, would nothing content you but our ewe lamb? Perhaps some cloister will be, for them too, the last resource of their desolation. They will fly for ease in their pain to the system which caused it. Bernard hopes so. So inhuman is the humanity of asceticism; cruel its tender mercies; thus does it depopulate the world of its best in order to improve it. …

“Bernard had his wish. He made Clairvaux the cynosure of all contemplative eyes. For any one who could exist at all as a monk, with any satisfaction to himself, that was the place above all others. Brother Godfrey, sent out to be first Abbot of Fontenay—as soon as he has set all things in order there, returns, only too gladly, from that rich and lovely region, to reenter his old cell, to walk around, delightedly revisiting the well-remembered spots among the trees or by the waterside, marking how the fields and gardens have come on, and relating to the eager brethren (for even Bernard’s monks have curiosity) all that befell him in his work. He would sooner be third Prior at Clairvaux, than Abbot of Fontenay. So, too, with Brother Humbert, commissioned in like manner to regulate Igny Abbey (fourth daughter of Clairvaux). He soon comes back, weary of the labor and sick for home, to look on the Aube once more, to hear the old mills go drumming and droning, with that monotony of muffled sound—the associate of his pious reveries—often heard in his dreams when far away; to set his feet on the very same flagstone in the choir where he used to stand, and to be happy. But Bernard, though away in Italy, toiling in the matter of the schism, gets to hear of his return, and finds time to send him across the Alps a letter of rebuke for this criminal self-pleasing, whose terrible sharpness must have darkened the poor man’s meditations for many a day.

“Bernard had further the satisfaction of improving and extending monasticism to the utmost; of sewing together, with tolerable success, the rended vesture of the Papacy; of suppressing a more popular and more Scriptural Christianity, for the benefit of his despotic order; of quenching for a time, by the extinction of Abelard, the spirit of free inquiry; and of seeing his ascetic and superhuman ideal of religion everywhere accepted as the genuine type of Christian virtue.”

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The Veronica is the portrait of our Saviour impressed upon a veil or kerchief, preserved with great care in the church of the Santi Apostoli at Rome. Collin de Plancy, Légendes des Saintes Images, p. 11, gives the following account of it:—

“Properly speaking, the Veronica (vera icon) is the true likeness of Our Lord; and the same name has been given to the holy woman who obtained it, because the name of this holy woman was uncertain. According to some, she was a pious Jewess, called Seraphia; according to others, she was Berenice, niece of Herod. It is impossible to decide between the different traditions, some of which make her a virgin, and others the wife of Zaccheus.

“However this may be, the happy woman who obtained the venerable imprint of the holy face lived not far from the palace of Pilate. Her house is still shown to pilgrims at Jerusalem; and a Canon of Mayence, who went to the Holy Land in 1483, reported that he had visited the house of the Veronica.

“When she saw Our Lord pass, bearing his cross, covered with blood, spittle, sweat, and dust, she ran to meet him, and, presenting her kerchief, tried to wipe his adorable face. Our Lord, leaving for an instant the burden of the cross to Simon the Cyrenean, took the kerchief, applied it to his face, and gave it back to the pious woman, marked with the exact imprint of his august countenance.”

Of the Veronica there are four copies in existence, each claiming to be the original; one at Rome, another at Paris, a third at Laon, and a fourth at Xaen in Andalusia. The traveller who has crossed the Sierra Morena cannot easily forget the stone column, surmounted by an iron cross, which marks the boundary between La Mancha and Andalusia, with the melancholy stone face upon it, and the inscription, “El verdadero Retrato de la Santa Cara del Dios de Xaen.” ↩︎
The Virgin Mary, Regina Coeli. ↩︎
The chariot of the sun. ↩︎
St. Bernard, absorbed in contemplation of the Virgin. ↩︎
Eve. St. Augustine, Serm. 18 “De Sanctis,” says: “Ilia percussit, ista sanavit.” ↩︎
Rachel is an emblem of Divine Contemplation. Inferno II 101, Beatrice says:—

“And came unto the place
Where I was sitting with the ancient Rachel.”

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Ruth the Moabitess, ancestress of King David. ↩︎
“Have mercy upon me,” are the first words of Psalm 51, “a Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him.” ↩︎
The saints of the Old Testament. ↩︎
The saints of the New Testament. ↩︎
John the Baptist, seated at the point of the mystic Rose, opposite to the Virgin Mary. He died two years before Christ’s resurrection, and during these two years was in the Limbo of the Fathers. ↩︎
The row of seats which divides the Rose horizontally, and crosses the two vertical lines of division, made by the seat of the Virgin Mary and those of the other Hebrew women on one side, and on the other the seats of John the Baptist and of the other saints of the New Testament beneath him. ↩︎
That is to say, by the faith of their parents, by circumcision, and by baptism, as explained line 76 et seq. ↩︎
Festinata gente, dying in infancy, and thus hurried into the life eternal. Shakespeare, King Lear, III 7:—

“Advise the Duke, where you are going, to a most festinate preparation.”

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Jacob and Esau. Genesis 25:22:—

“And the children struggled together within her.”

And Romans 9:11:—

“For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election, might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.”

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Buti comments thus:—

“As it pleased God to give black hair to one, and to the other red, so it pleased him to give more grace to one than to the other.”

And the Ottimo says:—

“One was red, the other black; which colors denote the temperaments of men, and accordingly the inclination of their minds.”

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The keenness of vision with which they are originally endowed. ↩︎
From Adam to Abraham. ↩︎
From Abraham to Christ. Genesis 17:10:—

“This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you, and thy seed after thee: Every man-child among you shall be circumcised.”

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The face of the Virgin Mary. Didron, in his Christian Iconography, I 242, devotes a chapter to the “History of the Portraits of God the Son.” Besides the Veronica and the Santo Volto, attributed to Nicodemus, he mentions others which tradition traces back to Pilate and St. Luke, and a statue erected to Christ by the woman who was cured of the bloody flux. In the following extract several others are referred to:—

“Abgarus, king of Edessa, having learnt, says Damascenus, the wonderful things related of our Saviour, became inflamed with Divine love; he sent ambassadors to the Son of God, inviting him to come and visit him, and should the Saviour refuse to grant his request, he charged his ambassadors to employ some artist to make a portrait of our Lord. Jesus, from whom nothing is hidden, and to whom nothing is impossible, being aware of the intention of Abgarus, took a piece of linen, applied it to his face, and depicted thereon his own image. This very portrait, continues Damascenus, is in existence at the present day, and in perfect preservation.

“At the same epoch, a minute verbal description of the appearance of Christ was in circulation. The following description, which is of great importance, was sent to the Roman Senate by Publius Lentulus, Proconsul of Judaea, before Herod. Lentulus had seen the Saviour, and had made him sit to him, as it were, that he might give a written description of his features and physiognomy. His portrait, apocryphal though it be, is at least one of the first upon record; it dates from the earliest period of the Church, and has been mentioned by the most ancient fathers. Lentulus writes to the Senate as follows: ‘At this time appeared a man who is still living and endowed with mighty power; his name is Jesus Christ. His disciples call him the Son of God; others regard him as a powerful prophet. He raises the dead to life, and heals the sick of every description of infirmity and disease. This man is of lofty stature, and well-proportioned; his countenance severe and virtuous, so that he inspires beholders with feelings both of fear and love. The hair of his head is of the color of wine, and from the top of the head to the ears straight and without radiance, but it descends from the ears to the shoulders in shining curls. From the shoulders the hair flows down the back, divided into two portions, after the manner of the Nazarenes; his forehead is clear and without wrinkle, his face free from blemish, and slightly tinged with red, his physiognomy noble and gracious. The nose and mouth faultless. His beard is abundant, the same color as the hair, and forked. His eyes blue and very brilliant. In reproving or censuring he is awe-inspiring; in exhorting and teaching, his speech is gentle and caressing. His countenance is marvellous in seriousness and grace. He has never once been seen to laugh; but many have seen him weep. He is slender in person, his hands are straight and long, his arms beautiful. Grave and solemn in his discourse, his language is simple and quiet. He is in appearance the most beautiful of the children of men.’

“The Emperor Constantine caused pictures of the Son of God to be painted from this ancient description.

“In the eighth century, at the period in which Saint John Damascenus wrote, the lineaments of this remarkable figure continued to be the same as they are to this day.

“The hair and the beard, the color of which is somewhat undetermined in the letter of Lentulus, for wine may be pale, golden, red, or violet color, is distinctly noted by Damascenus, who also adds the tint of the complexion; moreover, the opinion of Damascenus, like that of Lentulus, is decidedly in favor of the beauty of Christ, and the former severely censures the Manichaeans, who entertained a contrary opinion. Thus, then, Christ, in taking upon him the form of Adam, assumed features exactly resembling those of the Virgin Mary. … In the West, a century later than the time of Damascenus, Christ was always thus depicted. S. Anschaire, Archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen, who beheld Christ [in a vision], described him as ‘tall, clad in the manner of the Jews, and beautiful in face, the splendor of Divinity darted like a flame from the eyes of the Redeemer, but his voice was full of sweetness.’ ”

↩︎
The Angel Gabriel. Luke 1:28:—

“And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”

↩︎
The countenance of each saint became brighter. ↩︎
The word in the original is abbelliva, which Dante here uses in the sense of the Provençal, abellis, of Purgatorio XXVI 140. He uses the word in the same sense in Convito, II 7:—

“In all speech the speaker is chiefly bent on persuasion, that is, on pleasing the audience, all’ abbellire dell’ audienza, which is the source of all other persuasions.”

↩︎
The star of morning delighting in the sun, is from Canto VIII 12, where Dante speaks of Venus as

“The star
That wooes the sun, now following, now in front.”

↩︎
The Virgin Mary, the Queen of this empire. ↩︎
Adam. ↩︎
St. Peter. ↩︎
St. John, who lived till the evil days and persecutions of the Church, the bride of Christ, won by the crucifixion. ↩︎
Moses. ↩︎
Exodus 32:9:—

“And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiff-necked people.”

↩︎
Anna, mother of the Virgin Mary. ↩︎
Santa Lucìa, virgin and martyr. Dante, Inferno II 100, makes her, as the emblem of illuminating grace, intercede with Beatrice for his salvation. ↩︎
Trusting only to thine own efforts. ↩︎
Chaucer, “Second Nonnes Tale”:—

“Thou maide and mother, doughter of thy son,
Thou well of mercy, sinful soules cure,
In whom that God of bountee chees to won;
Thou humble and high over every creature,
Thou nobledest so fer forth our nature,
That no desdaine the maker had of kinde
His son in blood and flesh to clothe and winde.

“Within the cloystre blisful of thy sides,
Toke mannes shape the eternal love and pees,
That of the trine compas Lord and gide is,
Whom erthe, and see, and heven out of relees
Ay herien; and thou, virgine wemmeles,
Bare of thy body (and dweltest maiden pure)
The creatour of every creature.

“Assembled is in thee magnificence
With mercy, goodnesse, and with swiche pitee,
That thou, that art the sonne of excellence,
Not only helpest hem that praien thee,
But oftentime of thy benignitee
Ful freely, or that men thin helpe beseche,
Thou goest beforne, and art hir lives leche.”

See also his “Ballade of Our Ladie,” and “La Priere de Nostre Dame.” ↩︎
As St. Macarius said to his soul:—

“Having taken up thine abode in heaven, where thou hast God and his holy angels to converse with, see that thou descend not thence; regard not earthly things.”

↩︎
Finished the ardor of desire in its accomplishment. ↩︎
Aeneid, III 442, Davidson’s Tr.:—

“When, wafted thither, you reach the city Cumae, the hallowed lakes, and Avernus resounding through the woods, you will see the raving prophetess, who, beneath a deep rock, reveals the fates, and commits to the leaves of trees her characters and words. Whatever verses the virgin has inscribed on the leaves, she ranges in harmonious order, and leaves in the cave enclosed by themselves: uncovered they remain in their position, nor recede from their order. But when, upon turning the hinge, a small breath of wind has blown upon them, and the door [by opening] hath discomposed the tender leaves, she never afterward cares to catch the verses as they are fluttering in the hollow cave, nor to recover their situation, or join them together.”

↩︎
Luke 9:62:—

“No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

↩︎
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I Quaest. IV 2:—

“If therefore God be the first efficient cause of things, the perfections, of all things must preexist preeminently in God.” And Buti: “In God are all things that are made, as in the First Cause, that foresees everything.”

↩︎
Of all the commentaries which I have consulted, that of Buti alone sustains this rendering of the line. The rest interpret it, “What I say is but a simple or feeble glimmer of what I saw.” ↩︎
There are almost as many interpretations of this passage as there are commentators. The most intelligible is, that Dante forgot in a single moment more of the glory he had seen, than the world had forgotten in five and twenty centuries of the Argonautic expedition, when Neptune wondered at the shadow of the first ship that ever crossed the sea. ↩︎
Aristotle, Ethics, I 1, Gillies’s Tr.:—

“Since every art and every kind of knowledge, as well as all the actions and all the deliberations of men, constantly aim at something which they call good, good in general may be justly defined, that which all desire.”

↩︎
In the same manner the reflection of the Griffin in Beatrice’s eyes, Purgatorio XXXI 124, is described as changing, while the object itself remained unchanged:—

“Think, Reader, if within myself I marvelled,
When I beheld the thing itself stand still,
And in its image it transformed itself.”

↩︎
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I Quaest. XXIX 2:—

“What exists by itself, and not in another, is called subsistence.”

↩︎
The three Persons of the Trinity. ↩︎
The second circle, or second Person of the Trinity. ↩︎
The human nature of Christ; the incarnation of the Word. ↩︎
In this new light of God’s grace, the mystery of the union of the Divine and human nature in Christ is revealed to Dante. ↩︎
Wordsworth, “Resolution and Independence”:—

“As a cloud …
That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth all together, if it move at all.”

↩︎
1 John 4:16:—

“God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”

↩︎
In the Spanish schools the color of our Saviour’s mantle is generally a deep rich violet. ↩︎
Villani, VIII Ch. 96. ↩︎
Dino Compagni, III 76. ↩︎
Tiresias, who was blind. ↩︎
Sanchoniathon. ↩︎
Whom Plato banished from his imaginary republic. ↩︎

The Divine Comedy Endnotes 2,001–2,109

Endnotes 2,001⁠–⁠2,109