The Divine Comedy Volume Iii Part 5

[2] Still unknown by name.

[3] The March of Treviso, lying between Venice (Rialto) and the Alps.

[4] The hill on which stood the little stronghold of Romano, the birthplace of the tyrant Azzolino, or Ezzolino, whom Dante had seen in h.e.l.l (Canto XII.) punished for his cruel misdeeds, in the river of boiling blood. Cunizza was his sister.

[5] The sin which has limited the capacity of bliss, the sin which has determined the low grade in Paradise of Cunizza, is forgiven and forgotten, and she, like Piccarda, wishes only for that blessedness which she has.

[6] Folco, or Foulquet, of Ma.r.s.eilles, once a famous singer of songs of love, then a bishop. He died in 1213.

[7] The people of the region where Cunizza lived.

[8] The Paduan Guelphs, resisting the Emperor, to whom they owed duty, were defeated more than once, near Vicenza, by Can Grande, during the years in which Dante was writing his poem.

[9] The Sile and the Cagnano unite at Treviso, whose lord, Ricciardo da Camino, was a.s.sa.s.sinated in 1312.

[10] An act of treachery on the part of the Bishop and Lord of Feltro, Alessandro Novello, in delivering up Ghibelline exiles from Ferrara, of whom thirty were beheaded; a treason so vile that in the tower called Malta, where ecclesiastics who committed capital crimes were imprisoned, no such crime as his was ever punished.

[11] That is, of the Guelphs, by whom the designation of The Party was appropriated.

[12] The Thrones were, according to St. Gregory, that order of Angels through whom G.o.d executes his judgments.

[13] Because we see reflected from the Thrones the judgment of G.o.d above to fall on the guilty.

[14] See Canto VIII., near the beginning.

The next joy, which was already known to me as an ill.u.s.trious thing,[1] became to my sight like a fine ruby whereon the sun should strike. Through joy effulgence is gained there on high, even as a smile here; but below[2] the shade darkens outwardly, as the mind is sad.

[1] By the words of Cunizza.

[2] In h.e.l.l.

"G.o.d sees everything, and thy vision, blessed spirit, is in Him,"

said I, "so that no wish can steal itself away from thee. Thy voice, then, that ever charms the heavens, with the song of those pious fires which make a cowl for themselves with their six wings,[1] why does it not satisfy my desires? Surely I should not wait for thy request if I in-theed myself, as thou thyself in-meest."[2] "The greatest deep in which the water spreads,"[3]

began then his words, "except of that sea which garlands the earth, between its discordant sh.o.r.es stretches so far counter to the sun, that it makes a meridian where first it was wont to make the horizon.[4] I was a dweller on the sh.o.r.e of that deep, between the Ebro and the Magra,[5] which, for a short way, divides the Genoese from the Tuscan. With almost the same sunset and the same sunrise sit Buggea and the city whence I was, which once made its harbor warm with its own blood.[6] That people to whom my name was known called me Folco, and this heaven is imprinted by me, as I was by it. For the daughter of Belus,[7]

harmful alike to Sichaeus and Creusa, burned not more than I, so long as it befitted my hair;[8] nor she of Rhodopea who was deluded by Demophoon;[9] nor Alcides when he had enclosed Iole in his heart.[10] Yet one repents not here, but smiles, not for the fault which returns not to the memory, but for the power which ordained and foresaw. Here one gazes upon the art which adorns so great a work, and the good is discerned whereby the world above turns that below.

[1] The Seraphim, who with their wings cover their faces. See Isaiah, vi. 2.

[2] If I saw thee inwardly as thou seest me. Dante invents the words he uses here, and they are no less unfamiliar in Italian than in English.

[3] The Mediterranean.

[4] According to the geography of the time the Mediterranean stretched from east to west ninety degrees of longitude.

[5] Between the Ebro in Spain and the Magra in Italy lies Ma.r.s.eilles, under almost the same meridian as Buggea (now Bougie) on the African coast.

[6] When the fleet of Caesar defeated that of Pompey with its contingent of vessels and soldiers of Ma.r.s.eilles, B. C. 49.

[7] Dido.

[8] Till my hair grew thin and gray.

[9] Phyllis, daughter of the king of Thrace, who hung herself when deserted by Demophoon, the son of Theseus.

[10] The excess of the love of Hercules for Iole led to his death.

"But in order that thou mayst bear away satisfied all thy wishes which have been born in this sphere, it behoves me to proceed still further. Thou wouldst know who is in this light, which beside me here so sparkles, as a sunbeam on clear water. Now know that therewithin Rahab[1] is at rest, and being joined with our order it is sealed by her in the supreme degree. By this heaven in which the shadow that your world makes comes to a point[2] she was taken up before any other soul at the triumph of Christ. It was well befitting to leave her in some heaven, as a palm of the high victory which was won with the two hands,[3] because she aided the first glory of Joshua within the Holy Land, which little touches the memory of the Pope.

[1] "By faith the harlot Rabab perished not with them that believed not."--Hebrews, xi. 31. See Joshua, ii. 1-21; vi. 17; James, ii. 25.

[2] The conical shadow of the earth ended, according to Ptolemy, at the heaven of Venus. Philalethes suggests that there may be here an allegorical meaning, the shadow of the earth being shown in feebleness of will, worldly ambition, and inordinate love, which have allotted the souls who appear in these first heavens to the lowest grades in Paradise.

[3] Nailed to the cross. The glory of Joshua was the winning of the Holy Land for the inheritance of the children of Israel.

"Thy city, which is plant of him who first turned his back on his Maker, and whose envy[1] has been so bewept, produces and scatters the accursed flower[2] which has led astray the sheep and the lambs, because it has made a wolf of the shepherd. For this the Gospel and the great Doctors are deserted, and there is study only of the Decretals,[3] as is apparent by their margins.

On this the Pope and the Cardinals are intent; their thoughts go not to Nazareth, there where Gabriel spread his wings. But the Vatican, and the other elect parts of Rome, which have been the burial place for the soldiery that followed Peter, shall soon be free from this adultery."[4]

[1] "Through envy of the devil came death into the world."-- Wisdom of Solomon, ii. 24.

[2] The lily on its florin.

[3] The books of the Ecclesiastical Law.

[4] By the removal in 1305 of the Papal Court to Avignon.

CANTO X. Ascent to the Sun.--Spirits of the wise, and the learned in theology.--St. Thomas Aquinas.--He names to Dante those who surround him.

Looking upon His Son with the Love which the one and the other eternally breathe forth, the Primal and Ineffable Power made everything which revolves through the mind or through s.p.a.ce with such order that he who contemplates it cannot be without taste of Him.[1] Lift then thy sight, Reader, with me to the lofty wheels, straight to that region where the one motion strikes on the other;[2] and there begin to gaze with delight on the art of that Master who within Himself so loves it that His eye never departs from it. See how from that point the oblique circle which bears the planets[3] branches off, to satisfy the world which calls on them;[4] and if their road had not been bent, much virtue in the heavens would be in vain, and well-nigh every potency dead here below.[5] And if from the straight line its departure had been more or less distant, much of the order of the world, both below and above, would be defective. Now do thou remain, Reader, upon thy bench,[6] following in thought that which is fore. tasted, if thou wouldst be glad far sooner than weary. I have set before thee; henceforth feed thee by thyself, for that theme whereof I have been made scribe wrests all my care unto itself.

[1] All things, as well the spiritual and invisible objects of the intelligence as the corporal and visible objects of sense, were made by G.o.d the Father, operating through the Son, with the love of the Holy Spirit, and made in such order that he who contemplates the creation beholds the partial image of the Creator.

[2] At the equinox, the season of Dante's journey, the sun in Aries is at the intersection of the ecliptic and the equator of the celestial sphere, and his apparent motion in his annual revolution cuts the apparent diurnal motion of the fixed stars, which is performed in circles parallel to the equator.

[3] The ecliptic.

[4] Which invokes their influence.

[5] Because on the obliquity of their path depends the variety of their influence.

[6] As a scholar.