The Divine Comedy Volume Iii Part 8

[4] The grammatical construction is imperfect; the meaning is that the change in the temper of the see of Rome is due not to the fault of the Church itself, but to that of the Pope.

[5] Not for license to compound for unjust acquisitions by de.

voting a part of them to pious uses.

[6] "Not the t.i.thes which belong to G.o.d's poor."

[7] The true faith; "the seed is the word of G.o.d."--Luke, viii.

11.

[8] The authority conferred on him by Innocent III.

If such was one wheel of the chariot on which the Holy Church defended itself and vanquished in the field its civil strife,[1]

surely the excellence of the other should be very plain to thee, concerning which Thomas before my coming was so courteous. But the track which the highest part of its circ.u.mference made is derelict;[2] So that the mould is where the crust was.[3] His household, which set forth straight with their feet upon his footprints, are so turned round that they set the forward foot on that behind;[4] and soon the quality of the barvest of this bad culture shall be seen, when the tare will complain that the chest is taken from it.[5] Yet I say, he who should search our volume leaf by leaf might still find a page where he would read, 'I am that which I am wont:' but it will not be from Casale nor from Acquasparta,[6] whence such come unto the Written Rule that one flies from it, and the other contracts it.

[1] The heresies within its own borders.

[2] The track made by St. Francis is deserted.

[3] The change of metaphor is sudden; good wine makes a crust, bad wine mould in the cask.

[4] They go in an opposite direction from that followed by the saint.

[5] That it is taken from the chest in the granary to be burned.

[6] Frate Ubertino of Casale, the leader of a party of zealots among the Franciscans, enforced the Rule of the Order with excessive strictness; Matteo, of Acquasparta, general of the Franciscans in 1257, relaxed it.

"I am the life of Bonaventura of Bagnoregio, who in great offices always set sinister[1] care behind me. Illuminato and Augustin are here, who were among the first barefoot poor that in the cord made themselves friends to G.o.d. Hugh of St. Victor[2] is here with them, and Peter Mangiadore, and Peter of Spain,[3] who down below s.h.i.+nes in twelve books; Nathan the prophet, and the Metropolitan Chrysostom,[4] and Anselm,[5] and that Donatus[6] who deigned to set his hand to the first art; Raban[7] is here, and at my side s.h.i.+nes the Calabrian abbot Joachim,[8] endowed with prophetic spirit.

[1] Sinister, that is, temporal.

[2] Hugh (1097-1141), a noted schoolman, of the famous monastery of St. Victor at Paris.

[3] Peter Mangiador, or Comestor, "the Eater," so called as being a devourer of books. He himself wrote books famous in their time.

He was chancellor of the University at Paris, and died in 1198.

The Summae logicales of Peter of Spain, in twelve books, was long held in high repute. He was made Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum in 1273, and was elected Pope in 1276, taking the name of John XXI.

He was killed in May, 1277, by the fall of the ceiling of the chamber in which he was sleeping in the Papal palace at Viterbo.

He is the only Pope of recent times whom Dante meets in Paradise.

[4] The famous doctor of the Church, patriarch of Constantinople.

[5] Born about 1033 at Aosta in Piedmont, consecrated Arch.

bishop of Canterbury in 1093, died 1109; magnus et subtilis doctor in theologia."

[6] The compiler of the treatise on grammar (the first of the seven arts of the Trivium. and the Quadrivium), which was in use throughout the Middle Ages.

[7] Raba.n.u.s Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz, in the ninth century; a great scholar and teacher, "cui similem suo tempore non habuit Ecelesia."

[8] Joachim, Abbot of Flora, whose mystic prophecies had great vogue.

"The flaming courtesy of Brother Thomas, and his discreet discourse, moved me to celebrate[1] so great a paladin; and with me moved this company."

[1] Literally, "to envy;" hence, perhaps, "to admire," "to praise," "to celebrate;" but the meaning is doubtful.

CANTO XIII. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks again, and explains the relation of the wisdom of Solomon to that of Adam and of Christ, and declares the vanity of human judgment.

Let him imagine,[1] who desires to understand well that which I now saw (and let him retain the image like a firm rock, while I am speaking), fifteen stars which in different regions vivify the heaven with brightness so great that it overcomes all thickness of the air; let him imagine that Wain[2] for which the bosom of our heaven suffices both night and day, so that in the turning of its pole it disappears not; let him imagine the mouth of that horn[3] which begins at the point of the axle on which the primal wheel goes round,--to have made of themselves two signs in the heavens, like that which the daughter of Minos made, when she felt the frost of death,[4] and one to have its rays within the other, and both to revolve in such manner that one should go first and the other after; and he will have as it were the shadow of the true constellation, and of the double dance, which was circling the point where I was; because it is as much beyond our wont as the motion of the heaven which outspeeds all the rest is swifter than the movement of the Chiana.[5] There was sung riot Bacchus, not Paean, but three Persons in a divine nature, and it and the human in one Person. The singing and the revolving completed each its measure, and those holy lights gave attention to us, making themselves happy from care to care.[6]

[1] To form an idea of the brightness of the two circles of spirits, let the reader imagine fifteen of the brightest separate stars, joined with the seven stars of the Great Bear, and with the two brightest of the Lesser Bear, to form two constellations like Ariadne's Crown, and to revolve one within the other, one following the movement of the other.

[2] Charles's Wain, the Great Bear, which never sets.

[3] The Lesser Bear may be imagined as having the shape of a horn, of which the small end is near the pole of the heavens around which the Primum Mobile revolves.

[4] When Ariadne died of grief because of her desertion by Theseus, her garland was changed into the constellation known as Ariadne's Crown.

[5] The Chiana is one of the most sluggish of the streams of Tuscany.

[6] Rejoicing in the change from dance and song to tranquillity for the sake of giving satisfaction to Dante.

Then the light in which the marvellous life of the poor man of G.o.d had been narrated to me broke the silence among those concordant deities, and said, "Since one straw is threshed, since its seed is now garnered, sweet love invites me to beat out the other. Thou believest that in the breast, wherefrom the rib was drawn to form the beautiful cheek whose taste costs dear to all the world, and in that which, pierced. by the lance, both after and before made such satisfaction that it overcomes the balance of all sin, whatever of light it is allowed to human nature to have was all infused. by that Power which made one and the other; and therefore thou wonderest at that which I said above, when I told that the good which in the fifth light is inclosed had no second. Now open thine eyes to that which I answer to thee, and thou wilt see thy belief and my speech become in the truth as the centre in a circle.

"That which dies not and that which can die are naught but the splendor of that idea which in His love our Lord G.o.d brings to birth;[1] for that living Light which so proceeds from its Lucent Source that It is not disunited from It, nor from the Love which with them is intrined, through Its own bounty collects Its radiance, as it were mirrored, in nine subsistences, Itself eternally remaining one. Thence It descends to the ultimate potentialities, downward from act to act, becoming such that finally It makes naught save brief contingencies: and these contingencies I understand. to be the generated things which the heavens in their motion produce with seed and without.[2] The wax of these, and that which moulds it, are not of one mode, and therefore under the ideal stamp it s.h.i.+nes now more now less;[3]

whence it comes to pa.s.s that one same plant in respect to species bears better or worse fruit, and that ye are born with diverse dispositions. If the wax were exactly worked,[4] and the heavens were supreme in their power, the whole light of the seal would be apparent. But nature always gives it defective,[5] working like the artist who has the practice of his art and a hand that trembles. Nevertheless if the fervent Love disposes and imprints the clear Light of the primal Power, complete perfection is acquired here.[6] Thus of old the earth was made worthy of the complete perfection of the living being;[7] thus was the Virgin made impregnate;[8] so that I commend thy opinion that human nature never was, nor will be, what it was in those two persons.

[1] The creation of things eternal and things temporal alike is the splendid manifestation of the idea which the triune G.o.d, in His love, generated. The living light in the Son, emanating from its lucent source in the Father, in union with the love of the Holy Spirit, the three remaining always one, pours out its radiance through the nine orders of the Angelic Hierarchy, who distribute it by means of the Heavens of which they axe the Intelligences.

[2] Through the various movements and conjunctions of the Heavens, the creative light descends to the lowest elements, producing all the varieties of contingent things.

[3] The material of contingent or temporal things, and the influences which shape them, are of various sort, so that the splendor of the Divine idea is visible in them in different degree.

[4] If the material were always fit to receive the impression.

[5] Nature, the second Cause, never transmits the whole of the Creative light.

[6] If, however, the first Cause acts directly,--the fervent Love imprinting the clear Light of the primal Power,--there can be no imperfection in the created thing; it answers to the Divine idea.

[7] Thus, by the immediate operation of the Creator, the earth of which Adam was formed was made the perfect material for the f ormation of the creature with a living soul.

[8] In like manner, by the direct act of the Creator.

"Now, if I should not proceed further, 'Then how was this man without peer?' would thy words begin. But, in order that that which is not apparent may clearly appear, consider who he was, and the occasion which moved him to request, when it was said to him, 'Ask.' I have not so spoken that thou canst not clearly see that he was a king, who asked for wisdom, in order that he might be a worthy king; not to know the number of the motors here on high, or if necesse with a contingent ever made necesse;[1] non si est dare primum motum esse,[2] or if in the semicircle a triangle can be made so that it should not have one right angle.[3] Wherefore if thou notest this and what I said, a kingly prudence is that peerless seeing, on which the arrow of ray intention strikes.[4] And if thou directest clear eyes to the 'has arisen' thou wilt see it has respect only to kings, who are many, and the good are few. With this distinction[5] take thou my saying, and thus it can stand with that which thou believest of the first father, and of our Delight.[6] And let this be ever as lead to thy feet, to make thee move slow as a weary man, both to the YES and to the NO which thou seest not; for he is very low among the fools who affirms or denies without distinction, alike in the one and in the other case: because it happens, that oftentimes the current opinion bends in false direction, and then the inclination binds the understanding. Far more than vainly does he leave the bank, since he returns not such as be sets out, who fishes for the truth, and has not the art;[7] and of this are manifest proofs to the world Parmenides, Melissus, Bryson,[8] and many others who went on and knew not whither. So did Sabellius, and Arius,[9] and those fools who were as swords unto the Scriptures in making their straight faces crooked. Let not the people still be too secure in judgment, like him who reckons up the blades in the field ere they are ripe. For I have seen the briar first show itself stiff and wild all winter long, then bear the rose upon its top. And I have seen a bark ere now ran straight and swift across the sea through all its course, to perish at last at entrance of the harbor. Let not dame Bertha and master Martin, seeing one rob, and another make offering, believe to see them within the Divine counsel:[10] for the one may rise and the other may fall."