The Portable Dante (66 page)
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Authors: Dante Alighieri
his flame contains that lofty mind instilled with wisdom so profound—if truth speak truth— there never arose a second with such vision. | 114 |
Look at the burning candle next to him who, in the flesh, on earth saw to the depths of what an angel is and what it does. | 117 |
And next, inside this tiny light, there smiles the great defender of the Christian Age whose words in Latin Augustine employed. | 120 |
If your mind’s eye has moved from light to light behind my words of praise, you must be eager to know what spirit shines in the eighth flame. | 123 |
Wrapped in the vision of all good, rejoices the sainted soul who makes most manifest the world’s deceit to one who reads him well. | 126 |
The body that was torn from him below Cicldauro now possesses; to this peace he came from exile and from martyrdom. | 129 |
115-117. The burning candle is the soul of Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian who was converted by St. Paul (Acts 17:34). He was credited in Dante’s day with having written
The Celestial Hierarchy,
a treatise explaining the angelic orders, their nature and function.
118-120. The majority of the commentators believe this to be Paulus Orosius, a fifth-century Spanish priest and disciple of Augustine whose
Seven Books of History against the Pagans
was intended to prove through historical evidence that, contrary to pagan belief, the world had not deteriorated since the adoption of Christianity.
120. Augustine made use of Orosius’s Latin treatise
Historiarum libri,
which was written at the suggestion of the saint, as a means of historical confirmation for his own
City of God.
125-129. This is the soul of Boethius (born in Rome ca. 480 and died at Pavia in 524), a Roman patrician, statesman, and philosopher, and author of the celebrated
Consolation of Philosophy,
which he wrote while in prison in Pavia. In 510 he became the consul of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, but was later imprisoned by him on false charges of treason and magic, and was finally executed.
128. Cieldauro refers to the Church of St. Peter in Ciel d’Oro in Pavia, where Boethius was buried.
See those next flames: they are the fervent breath of Isidore, of Bede, and of that Richard whose contemplations made him more than man. | 132 |
This light from which your eyes return to me shines from a soul once given to grave thoughts, who mourned that death should be so slow to come: | 135 |
this is the endless radiance of Siger, who lectured on the Street of Straw, exposing invidiously logical beliefs. ” | 138 |
Then, as the tower-clock calls us to come at the hour when God’s Bride is roused from bed to woo with matin song her Bridegroom’s love, | 141 |
with one part pulling thrusting in the other, chiming, | 144 |
so I was witness to that glorious wheel moving and playing voice on voice in concord with sweetness, harmony unknown, save there | 147 |
where joy becomes one with eternity. |
131. The Spaniard St. Isidore of Seville (ca. 570-636), one of the most influential writers of the early Middle Ages, was a distinguished ecclesiastic and the author of an important and much-used encyclopedia of scientific knowledge of the time
(Etymologiarum Libri XX
or
Origines).
He was made archbishop of Seville in 600.
The Venerable Bede (ca. 673-735), an English monk known as the father of English history, was the author of the five-volume
Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation.
He also wrote hagiography, homilies, hymns, works on grammar and chronology, and commentaries on the Old and New Testaments.
131-132. This is Richard of St. Victor, who was thought to have been born in Scotland (d. 1173). He was known as the Great Contemplator after his treatise
De Contemplatione.
He was a celebrated twelfth-century mystic, theologian, and scholastic philosopher who studied at the University of Paris and then became a canon-regular at the Augustinian monastery at St. Victor.
136-138. This is the soul of Siger of Brabant (1226?-1284?), a distinguished Averroist philosopher who taught at the University of Paris, which was located in the Rue de Fouarre or “Street of Straw. ” His belief that the world had existed from eternity and doubt in the immortality of the soul involved him in a lengthy dispute with his colleague Thomas Aquinas and eventually led to charges of heresy.
D
ANTE’S POSITION IN
the sun, among the Wise who sought Heaven’s truth, gives him the opportunity to admonish mortals who seek earthly satisfaction, while he, in Paradise, stands effortlessly with Beatrice, having risen through no merit of his own to the realms of the Blest. The souls of the Wise once again cease their circling and singing in order that St. Thomas may respond to the Pilgrim’s puzzlement. In the previous canto Thomas had referred to the flock of Dominic as that in which the sheep “may fatten if they do not stray” and had pointed out the soul of Solomon, saying, “there never arose a second with such vision. ” It is the first of these two statements which is now to be explained (the second will be dealt with in Canto XIII), but by way of explanation, Thomas, as a courtesy to the companion order of St. Dominic, relates first the love story of St. Francis and Lady Poverty. Thomas then returns to the contemporary state of his own order, the Dominicans, to condemn their degeneracy and thereby elucidate the meaning of the statement “where all may fatten if they do not stray. ”
(Insensate strivings of mortality— how useless are those reasonings of yours that make you beat your wings in downward flight! | 3 |
Men bent on law, some on the | 6 |
some planning theft, others affairs of state, some tangled in the pleasures of the flesh, some merely given up to indolence, | 9 |
and I, relieved of all such vanities, was there with Beatrice in high Heaven, magnificently, gloriously welcomed.) | 12 |
When each light on the circle had returned to where it was before the dance began, they stopped as still as candles in a stand. | 15 |
4. Attributed to Hippocrates, the
Aphorisms
served as a medical textbook.
And from within the splendid radiance that had already spoken came more words, and as it smiled, a more effulgent light: | 18 |
“Just as I shine reflecting His own rays, so, as I gaze into the endless light, I understand the reason for your thoughts. | 21 |
You are perplexed and want me to explain in simple terms, with clear, explicit words, on your mind’s level, what I meant to say | 24 |
when I said earlier: ‘where all may fatten, ’ and ‘never arose a second with such vision, ’ indeed, a clear distinction must be made. | 27 |
The Providence that governs all the world with wisdom so profound none of His creatures can ever hope to see into Its depths, | 30 |
in order that the Bride of that sweet Groom, who crying loud espoused her with His blood, might go to her Beloved made more secure | 33 |
within herself, more faithful to her Spouse, ordained two noble princes to assist her on either side, each serving as a guide. | 36 |
One of the two shone with seraphic love, the other through his wisdom was on earth a splendor of cherubic radiance. | 39 |
Now I shall speak of only one, for praise of one, no matter which, is praise of both, for both their labors served a single end. | 42 |
Between the Topine and the stream that flows down from that hill the blest Ubaldo chose, a fertile slope hangs from a lofty mountain | 45 |
37-42. Francis is characterized by his “seraphic love, ” the Seraphim being the highest order of angels and symbolic of the greatest love for God. Dominic, known for his learning, is associated with the Cherubim, the second order of angels and those acknowledged as the wisest.
which sends Perugia gusts of cold and heat through Porta Sole, and behind it Gualdo grieves with Nocera for their heavy yoke. | 48 |
Born on this slope where steepness breaks the most, a sun rose to the world as radiantly as this sun here does sometimes from the Ganges; | 51 |
thus, when this town is named let none call it Ascesi, for the word would not suffice— much more precise a word is | 54 |
Only a few years after he had risen did his invigorating powers begin to penetrate the earth with a new strength: | 57 |
while still a youth he braved his father’s wrath, because he loved a lady to whom all would bar their door as if to death itself. | 60 |
Before the bishop’s court | 63 |
Bereft of her first spouse, despised, ignored she waited eleven hundred years and more, living without a lover till he came, | 66 |
alone, though it was known that she was found with Amyclas secure against the voice which had the power to terrify the world; | 69 |
49-54. St. Francis, himself a “sun, ” rose on the world in the manner of the real sun (the Ganges River marking the easternmost point of the habitable world). St. Francis was born Giovanni Francesco Bernardone, son of a wool merchant, in 1181 or 1182, at Assisi. As a young man he pursued a life of pleasure but changed his ways after a series of hardships (including two illnesses) befell him. He resolved to renounce the worldly life and devote himself to poverty, which he called his bride.
61-63.
“Et coram patre”
(“In the presence of his father”), and before the bishop of Assisi, in the spring of 1207, Francis gave up his inheritance and took his vow of poverty.
67-69. This story tells how Amyclas, a poor fisherman, because he possessed absolutely no worldly goods remained tranquil, unafraid, and unimpressed when Caesar, who had been waging war in his area, appeared at the door of his shack and asked to be ferried across the Adriatic.
alone, though known was her fierce constancy that time she climbed the cross to be with Christ, while Mary stayed below alone. | 72 |
Enough of such allusions. In plain words take Francis, now, and Poverty to be the lovers in the story I have told. | 75 |
Their sweet accord, their faces spread with bliss, the love, the mystery, their tender looks gave rise in others’ hearts to holy thoughts; | 78 |
The venerable Bernard was the first to cast aside his shoes and run, and running toward such great peace, it seemed to him he lagged. | 81 |
O unsuspected wealth! O fruitful good! Giles throws his shoes off, then Sylvester too— they love the bride so much, they seek the groom. | 84 |
And then this father, this good lord, set out with his dear lady and that family that now was girded with the humble cord. | 87 |
It mattered not that he was born the son of Bernardone, nor did he feel shame when people mocked him for his shabbiness; | 90 |
but he announced, the way a king might do, his hard intent to Innocent who gave the seal establishing his holy Order. | 93 |
The souls who followed him in poverty grew more and more, and then this archimandrite— whose wonder-working life were better sung | 96 |
79-81. Bernard is Bernardo da Quintavalle, a wealthy merchant of Assisi, who was the first follower of St. Francis.
83. Giles was the third disciple of St. Francis. He preached in the Holy Land and in Tunisia and died in 1262. Sylvester was another early follower of St. Francis.
95. “Archimandrite” is a Greek Church term meaning “head of the fold, ” or one who supervises convents.
by Heaven’s highest angels—saw his work crowned once again, now by Honorius through inspiration of the Holy Spirit. | 99 |
Then in the haughty presence of the Sultan, urged by a burning thirst for martyrdom, he preached Christ and his blessed followers, | 102 |
but, finding no one ripe for harvest there, and loath to waste his labors, he returned to reap a crop in the Italian fields; | 105 |
then on bare rock between Arno and Tiber he took upon himself Christ’s holy wounds, and for two years he wore this final seal. | 108 |
When it pleased Him who had ordained that soul for such great good to call him to Himself, rewarding him on high for lowliness, | 111 |
he, to his brothers, as to rightful heirs, commended his most deeply cherished lady, commanding them to love her faithfully; | 114 |
and in the lap of poverty he chose to die, wanting no other bier—from there that pristine soul returned to its own realm. | 117 |
Think now what kind of man were fit to be his fellow helmsman on Saint Peter’s boat, keeping it straight on course in the high sea— | 120 |
and such a steersman was our Patriarch; and those who follow his command will see the richness of the cargo in their hold. | 123 |