The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  there his assault bore down most heavily.

  And from him many rivulets sprang to birth

  by which the Catholic orchard is so watered

  that its little trees spring greener from the earth.

  If such was the one wheel of the great car

  in which the Church rode to defend herself

  and win in open field her civil war,

  you cannot fail to see with a clear mind

  the excellence of that other, about whom,

  before I joined you, Thomas was so kind.

  But the track its great circumference cut of old

  is so abandoned that the casks are empty,

  and where there once was crust, now there is mold.

  His family, that formerly used to go

  in his very footsteps, is so turned around

  that it prints toe on heel, and heel on toe.

  Soon shall we see the harvest of these years

  of lazy cultivation, and hear the darnel,

  the storehouse shut against it, shed its tears.

  Search our book leaf by leaf and you will see,

  I have no doubt, written upon some page:

  ‘I am today all that I used to be.’

  But not at Casal’ nor Acquasparta—there

  they come to keep our rule, and in the keeping

  one loosens it, one tightens it like a snare.

  I am the life of Bonaventure, on earth

  of Bagnoregio, who in great offices

  always put back the things of lesser worth.

  Illuminato and Augustine are here,

  two of the first-come of the barefoot poor.

  For the cord they wore God holds them ever dear.

  The prior Hugo is here, and the deathless glow

  of Peter Mangiadore, and Peter of Spain

  whose light still shines in twelve small books below.

  And the prophet Nathan, and the eternal part

  of Chrysostom, and Anselm, and that Donatus

  who gladly turned his hand to the first art.

  Rabanus is also here; and here beside me

  shines the Calabrian abbot Joachim

  whose soul was given the power of prophecy.

  The ardent courtesy of my holy brother

  and his apt praise of one great paladin

  moved me to say this much about the other

  in emulous and loving eulogy;

  and so moved all these of my company.”

  NOTES

  2. the holy millstone: The wheel of souls, called a millstone here perhaps to suggest the ponderous turning of God’s will (cf. the expression “the mills of the Gods”) but also to describe their motion, for a millstone moves slowly when it starts to turn, and this wheel of souls had not completed its first revolution before it was surrounded by another wheel.

  5. a second wheel: Of twelve more splendors. In the heavenly hierarchy these are probably a grade inferior to the souls of the first wheel (line 13: “the outer band born of the inner one”). The inner band, moreover, revolves nearer the center of the sun (Divine Illumination). Lines 10-18 certainly suggest that the two wheels are complementary to one another. The total of twenty-four may suggest a reference to the books of the Old Testament. (See Purgatorio, XXIX, 64, note.)

  10-18. The compounding of metaphors in this passage is characteristically Dantean. The twin rainbows were said to occur when Juno called her handmaiden (Iris) to attend her. Iris (the Rainbow) was the messenger of the Gods as well as being especially associated with Juno. Thus, when she attends her mistress she presents herself in a double splendor. Line 13 is based on Dante’s belief that the outer band of a twin rainbow is a reflection of the inner band. This reflection is like the voice of Echo, an outer reflection of the inner (first) sound. Echo was the wandering nymph who wasted away for love of Narcissus (consumed by the fire of love as vapors are consumed by the Sun) until the gods changed her to a stone. The figure then shifts from classical mythology to the Bible, referring to Genesis, ix, 8-17, in which God made a pact with Noah and his sons, promising that the Deluge would not be repeated, and hung the rainbow in the sky as token of His pledge.

  28. one of those new splendors: St. Bonaventure. A Franciscan, he eulogizes St. Dominic and laments the decay of the Franciscan order, just as Aquinas, a Dominican, has eulogized St. Francis and lamented the decay of the Dominican order. Later, Bonaventure will identify the other souls of his circle (lines 130 ff.).

  St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) was born Giovanni di Fidanza at Bagnoregio (now Bagnorea) near Lake Bolsena. He was a scholar saint and a leading theologian. He became Minister General of the Franciscan Order in 1257 and was created Cardinal Bishop of Albano in 1273. Much of his scholarship was carried out in France, where he died during the sessions of the second Council of Lyons. He was canonized in 1482 by Sixtus IV and pronounced sixth (Doctor Seraphicus) among the Doctors of the Church by Sixtus V in 1587.

  31-45. INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE OF ST. DOMINIC. Compare the words of Aquinas in introducing the Life of St. Francis (XI, 28-42).

  32. that other leader: St. Dominic.

  33. through whom: The phrasing is obscure. Dante probably means that the earlier praise of St. Francis (Bonaventure’s leader) is due to Dominic because his rule taught Aquinas such loving praises.

  37-39. rearmed: By the blood of martyrs when persecution had all but scattered it. the Holy Standard: The Cross.

  43. as you have heard said: In XI, 32 ff. His bride: The Church.

  46-51. The land here referred to is Spain. In the sea beyond it, according to Dante’s geography, the sun hides from all mortal sight when it is midnight in Jerusalem. For Dante, all of the earth’s land area consisted of an arc of 180° from India to Spain with Jerusalem at the center, the other 180° of the earth’s circumference being water. Thus, when the sun was at its furthest point from Jerusalem it shone only upon the watery wastes, hidden from the eyes of mortals.

  52-54. a fortunate village: Calahorra, birthplace of St. Dominic, lies on the Ebro about 60 miles due south of the Bay of Biscay where it washes the westernmost point of the Spanish-French border. the great shield: Of the house of Castile. It is quartered and contains on one side a castle above a lion and on the other a lion above a castle, thus one lion is subjugating the castle and the other is being subjugated by it.

  55 ff. LIFE OF ST. DOMINIC (1170-1221). Not all of the details Dante offers in his account of St. Dominic have a historic base. Dominic may have been born of an ancient family named Guzman, but little is known of his origins. He was an austere but undeviating man of mercy and with whole faith in pure doctrine. Beginning as an Augustinian, Dominic sought to overcome the heresies of the Albigensians, partly in defense of the pure faith and partly to save them from the terrors of the crusade that eventually destroyed them in a hideous blood bath. He founded the Dominican Order with the special purpose of saving the Albigensians from destruction in this world and damnation in the next. In 1215 he won provisional papal approval of his order from Innocent III, and, in 1216, full confirmation by Honorius III. He died in Bologna in 1221 and was canonized in 1234. Unlike Francis, who dreaded learning as a corruptive force and praised the holy ignorance of the rude and simple mind, Dominic labored for purity of doctrine and founded his order for missionary scholars who were to go forth and preach the pure faith. Thus the founding principles of the two great orders were in many senses opposed and yet complementary.

  The notes that follow comment on Dante’s version of the life of St. Dominic, not on the historical record:

  58-60. The mind and soul form at the instant of conception and take on the gifts assigned by the influences of the spheres. While still in the womb, Dominic was said to be so gifted that his mother foresaw the Dominican Order in a dream of giving birth to a black and white dog. Black and white are the Dominican colors, and “Domini canes” translates “hounds of the Lord.”

  61-66. Dominic married the faith at the Baptismal font, each bringing t
o the other a dowry of strength and of holy purpose. Following his baptism, his godmother is supposed to have dreamed that he had a star on his forehead, a sign that he would bring God’s light to man.

  67-75. “Dominic” is the possessive form of Latin “Domine” (the Lord). Note the triple use of “Christ” to rhyme with itself. Dante has not so rhymed before in the Comedy. He will again in XIV, XIX, and XXXII. He will not rhyme “Christ” with any other word because none is fit to be joined with that holy name. In a tenzone against Forese (who appears in Purgatorio, XXIII) the younger Dante had once made use of what he probably came to think of as a sacrilegious rhyme on “Christ.” This later device may be his way of making amends.

  75-81. As noted above, little is known about Dominic’s parents. The details of their names, like the tales of Dominic’s prenatal powers, are the stuff of pious folk tales.

  82-87. the Ostian: Enrico di Susa, who became Bishop of Ostia in 1271. Taddeo: Probably Taddeo d’Alderotto, a Florentine physician born circa 1215. The first was a successful scholar of canon law, the second of medicine. Both acquired money and fame as a result of their secular studies. Dominic, on the other hand, studied only for the true manna of spiritual knowledge in order that he might labor in the vineyard (the Church) in which the vines wither and grow pale if they are neglected.

  88-96. Because of a decree against the founding of new Orders, Dominic had to plead for many years before he could win approval from the papal seat which is now (i.e., as of 1300) corrupted by Boniface VIII. Dominic did not ask permission to dispense church wealth (withholding two or three of every six coins for himself), nor for a benefice, nor for decimas quae sunt pauperum Dei (the tithes that belong to God’s poor). He asked only for license to combat heresy, and thus to defend the seed of the true faith from which are sprung, as plants of the everlasting tree, the twenty-four doctors that surround Dante as Bonaventure speaks.

  97-102. The reference here is to Dominic’s years of labor against the Albigensian heresy. He joined a mission for that purpose as early as 1203. In 1206 he opened in France a mission house dedicated to saving Albigensian women from their heresy. In 1208 Innocent III declared a crusade against the Albigensian plain-folk (they were anti-church and, among other major points of doctrine, denied the Resurrection). In seven years of savage warfare and massacres the Albigensians were wiped out. Thus, when Dominic was allowed in 1215 to found his Order of Preaching Friars, he had already been laboring for at least twelve years to wipe out heresy, not by the sword, but by winning the heretics back to the faith through his preachments.

  106-111. If such was the one . . . the excellence of that other: Since the car (the chariot) must have two equal wheels if it is to work properly, the excellence of the one wheel (Dominic) testifies to the excellence of the other (Francis), about whom Aquinas spoke in XI.

  112 ff. LAMENT FOR THE DECLINE OF THE FRANCISCAN ORDER. Bonaventure now laments the decline of his Franciscans as Aquinas earlier lamented the decline of the Dominicans. The core of this metaphor has changed from the chariot of war to the two-wheeled cart in which peasants haul grapes from the vineyard. The circumference of this great wheel (the Franciscan order) no longer turns in its former track, going back and forth from the vineyard to the winery. Hence the grapes (souls? good works?) are not brought in, and in the barrels (salvation? rectitude? the Church?) where once there used to gather the crust of sediment left by good wine, there is now only the mold that forms in empty barrels.

  117. toe on heel, and heel on toe: Instead of walking, as the first disciples did, in the footsteps of St. Francis, the decayed Franciscans walk backward in them, leaving their toe prints on the heel of the true tracks, and their heel prints on the toes; hence, walking in the other direction.

  118-120. the harvest . . . of lazy cultivation: Bonaventure’s moral point and its symmetrical response to Aquinas’s lament for the decline of the Dominican Order are clear enough, but historically, the original rule of St. Francis was so harsh that it was, in effect, banned by the Church. Its severity had, in fact, caused a schism within the order even before the death of St. Francis. One group sought to modify the rule of absolute poverty. The other (the Zealots or Spiritual Franciscans from whom stemmed the Penitentes) insisted on the rule to the point of open conflict with church authority. In 1318, in fact, four of the Spirituals were burned for heresy when they refused to modify the original rule of St. Francis.

  There is an odd irony in the history of the Franciscans. The piety, fervor, and absolute poverty of the early monks made its impression upon a pious people, who began to make rich gifts to the order. Inevitably, an administrator had to appear, and so the monks of poverty had to acquire stewards and accountants. St. Bonaventure sought to resolve this conflict by teaching that all the property given to the friars was the property of the Church but was held for their use (usus pauperis) in their life and work.

  This schism was the lazy cultivation that made a bad harvest inevitable. Given the nature of Bonaventure’s teaching, the bad harvest (the darnel) would be those Franciscans who risked excommunication by insisting, against direct papal orders, on the unmitigated rule (though he would, of course, include those Franciscans who observed the modified rule too slackly). Darnel or rye grass or black caraway springs up among the cultivated grains. Its hard seeds, ground up with the edible grains and so eaten as bread, can cause nervous disorders. It (the damned souls?) must be weeded out carefully (by good cultivation) and kept out of the good grain, the storehouse (the order? the Church? heaven?) shut against it.

  121-123. our book: Used figuratively for the Franciscan Order. some page: Some brother, some member of the Order.

  124-126. Casal: The Franciscan monastery at Casale in Monferato. Ubertino di Casale (1259-1338) was general of the chapter and, favoring the Spirituals, so tightened the rule that he was forced to leave the Order. Acquasparta: In Todi. From this monastery Matteo d’Acquasparta rose to be general of the Order in 1287 and cardinal in 1288. Under him the Franciscan rule was substantially relaxed.

  THE SOULS OF THE SECOND GARLAND:

  130. Illuminato and Augustine: Two of the early brothers. Illuminato accompanied St. Francis on his mission to the East. Augustine joined the order in 1210.

  133. The prior Hugo: Hugo of St. Victor (1096?-1141). Born in Saxony, he went to the monastery of St. Victor in Paris in 1115, where he taught philosophy and theology. In 1133 he was made prior and given charge of all studies.

  134. Peter Mangiadore: Of Troyes (1110-1179?), Dean of the Cathedral of Troyes, 1147-1164. His Historia Scholastica was long the standard work on Bible history. Peter of Spain: Became John XXI in 1276, died in 1277. He was born in Lisbon circa 1226. Among the twelve books here referred to was his well-known summary of logical principles, Summulae logicales.

  136. the prophet Nathan: See II Samuel, xii. Nathan spoke out against the sins of King David.

  137. Chrysostom: The name in Greek means “Golden Mouth,” a tribute to his oratorical power. He was John of Antioch (344?-407), Metropolitan of Constantinople. Like Nathan, he denounced the sins of the ruler. He was exiled for his pains by the Empress Eudoxia. Anselm: Born in Aosta, Lombardy, circa 1033. As Archbishop of Canterbury (from 1093) he fought the king on the question of the recognition of the Pope. Forced into exile in 1103, he returned to Canterbury in 1107, and died there in 1109. Donatus: Lived in Rome about the middle of the fourth century. He wrote commentaries on Terence and Virgil (the latter of which may have been what recommended him to Dante for his place here) and a book on grammar that was widely used in Dante’s time. Grammar is “the first art” (first of the seven liberal arts that make up the trivium and quadrivium of the classical curriculum).

  139. Rabanus: Rabanus Maurus (776?-856). Became Archbishop of Mainz in 847. Bible scholar, poet, and author of De clericorum institutione, a manual for clerics.

  140. Joachim: Of Fiore (1132?-1202). A Cistercian mystic whose doctrines were especially popular among the Spiritual Franciscans who op
posed Bonaventure. There is no historic evidence of his prophetic gift, and some of his preachments were specifically condemned by the Lateran Council in 1215 and by Alexander IV in 1256.

  142-144. my holy brother: St. Thomas. one great paladin: St. Francis. the other: St. Dominic. The paladins were the twelve great champions who surrounded Charlemagne.

  Canto XIII

  THE FOURTH SPHERE: THE SUN

  The Intellect of the Faith:

  Theologians and Doctors

  of the Church: Aquinas

  THE TWENTY-FOUR blessed spirits, moved by the concluding words of Bonaventure, manifest themselves as a mystical constellation while ringing forth a hymn of praise that fills all Heaven.