Notes.
12 Iris, the rainbow, was Juno’s
handmaiden and the messenger of the gods.
14 Echo, frustrated by her love for
Narcissus, wasted away into a mere voice (Metamorphoses III, 305-411).
29 The voice belongs to Saint Bonaventure
(1221-1274), the "Seraphic Doctor," general of the Franciscan order in 1257 and
Cardinal Archbishop of Albano in 1273.
52 Calaroga is in Old Castile whose shield
displays lions in alternating quarters, one lion above a castle and one below (l. 54).
55 Saint Dominic (1170-1221), founder of the
Order of Preachers, which was approved in 1216 by Honorius III, attempted to convert the
Albigensian heretics in Provence.
60 Dominic’s mother, the legend goes,
dreamed she would give birth to a black and white dog with a firebrand in its mouth: the
colors of the Preachers’ habit.
69 Dominicus ("of the
Lord") is the possessive adjective of Dominus.
75 The first counsel of the religious life is
poverty.
79 Felix in Latin means "happy,"
and Joanna in Hebrew means "graced."
83 Enrico di Susa became the prosperous
bishop of Ostia in 1271, and Taddeo d’Alderotto was a well-to-do physician in
Florence. Other identifications have also been suggested.
124 Acquasparta and Casale, two Franciscan
monasteries or two leaders from these monasteries, here represent the controversy between
the relaxed or strict (the "Spirituals" of Casale) observation of the rule of
poverty.
133 Hugh of Saint Victor (1096?-1141) taught
theology at the abbey of Saint Victor in Paris. He joins two of Saint Francis’s first
disciples here (l. 131).
134 Peter Comestor (d. 1179) was chancellor
of the University of Paris, and Peter of Spain (1226-1277) wrote a twelve-volume study on
logic and became Pope John XXI in 1276.
136 Nathan the prophet accused King David of
adultery (2 Samuel 12). Saint Anselm (1033-1109) was Archbishop of Canterbury and an
author of theological tracts. Saint John Chrysostom (d. 407) was Patriarch of
Constantinople and a Church Father.
139 Rabanus Maurus (d. 856) was Archbishop of
Mainz, a poet and religious writer.
140 Joachim of Flora (d. 1202), a Cistercian
abbot and mystic, wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse which divided history into three
stages according to the Three Persons of the Trinity. His teachings strongly influenced
the Franciscan Spirituals whom Bonaventure opposed. |
|
- The
instant that the blessed flame had taken
- To
speak this final word, the sacred millstone
-
Started its rotation once again;
-
- And
it had not yet turned completely when
- 5
A second circle closed around the first,
-
Motion matched with motion, song with song:
-
- Song
that surpassed in those sweet-sounding pipes
- The
music of our Muses or our Sirens
- Much
as a ray surpasses its reflection.
-
- 10
Just as, across the thinned-out clouds two rainbows,
-
Parallel and alike in color, bend
- When
Juno gives the order to her handmaid —
-
- The
outer band formed by the inner one:
- The
way the words were of the wandering nymph
- 15
Whom love consumed as sunlight consumes vapors —
-
- And
let the people on earth forecast how,
-
Through the covenant God made with Noah,
- Never
again shall the world be flooded.
-
- Two
garlands of sempiternal roses
- 20
Revolved around us, and in this manner too
- The
outer circling answered to the inner.
-
- Now
when the dance and all high festival
- Of
singing and flaming scintillation
- Of
light with light in gentleness and gladness
-
- 25
At the same moment and with one accord
- Had
ended, like the eyes at pleasure’s prompting
-
Compelled in unison to close and open,
-
- Out
of the heart of one of these new lights
- There
stirred a voice which made me like the needle
- 30
In a compass turning to the North Star:
-
- It
began, "The love that makes me beautiful
- Draws
me to speak about the other leader
- For
whose sake mine is so well spoken of.
-
-
"It’s fitting to bring one in with the other
- 35
That, where they waged war toward one common goal,
- Their
glory likewise may shine out together.
-
-
"Christ’s army, which had cost so dear to arm
-
Afresh, was marching on behind the standard
- With
slow and straggling steps and scanty numbers,
-
- 40
"When the one Emperor who reigns forever
-
Provided for his troops who were in peril
-
Through grace alone, not through their worthiness,
-
-
"And, as you heard, to help his Bride he sent
- Two
champions who by their words and actions
- 45
Rallied the people who had gone astray.
-
-
"In that region where the West Wind rises
-
Sweetly to open up the leaves in bud
- Which
Europe sees herself dressed in anew —
-
-
"Not too far from the crashing of the waves
- 50
Behind which, after his long course, the sun
-
Sometimes conceals himself from everyone,
-
-
"There lies the fortunate Calaroga
-
Beneath the safeguard of the mighty shield
- Which
bears the lion sovereign and subdued.
-
- 55
"Within this town was born the ardent lover
- Of
Christian faith, the holy athlete,
- Kind
to his friends and cruel to his foes.
-
-
"His mind, as soon as it had been created,
- So
filled with living virtue that he made,
- 60
From in the womb, his mother prophesy.
-
-
"When he and Faith exchanged their marriage vows
-
Before the sacred fountain where for dowry
- They
pledged each other mutual salvation,
-
-
"The lady who had acted as his sponsor
- 65
Saw in a dream the wonder-working fruit
- Which
was to come from him and from his heirs.
-
-
"And that his name might show his real self,
- A
spirit from here went to christen him
- With
the possessive of Him whose he would be:
-
- 70
"Dominic he was called, and I speak of him
- As of
the husbandman whom Christ has chosen
- To
help him in the tilling of his garden.
-
-
"Clearly he seemed Christ’s messenger and friend,
- For
the first love made manifest in him
- 75
Was after the first counsel that Christ gave.
-
-
"Many times his nurse discovered him
- Quiet
and awake upon the ground,
- As if
to say, ‘It is for this I came.’
-
-
"Oh his father — truly happy Felix!
- 80
Oh his mother — truly graced Joanna,
- If
the roots of their names mean what men say.
-
-
"Not for the world for whose sake men now toil,
- Aping
the Ostian and Thaddeus,
- But
only out of love of the true manna,
-
- 85
"In short time he became so great a teacher
- That
he began to labor round the vineyard
- Which
turns gray if the dresser shirks his work.
-
-
"And of the Seat which once was kindlier
- To
the devoted poor — not in itself
- 90
Degraded, but in him who’s seated there —
-
-
"He did not ask to keep half of his payments,
- Nor
for the funds of the first vacancy,
- Nor
for the tithes belonging to God’s poor,
-
-
"But for permission to fight the errant world
- 95
In defense of the seed from which there sprang
- The
twenty-four plants that surround you here.
-
-
"Then both with doctrine and determination,
- In
the apostolic office he set out,
- Like
a torrent gushing from a lofty vein;
-
- 100
"And his force struck the stocks of heresy
- With
the most vehemence in those enclaves
- Where
the resistance was most obstinate.
-
-
"From him there flowed out those divergent streams
- With
which the Catholic garden is so watered
- 105
That its small trees have a more vigorous life.
-
-
"If such was one wheel of the chariot
- In
which the Holy Church defends herself
- And
in the field puts down her civil strife,
-
-
"The excellence of the other wheel which Thomas
- 110
Extolled so courteously before I came
-
Surely must be evident to you.
-
-
"But the track taken by the topmost part
- Of
that wheel’s rim has now been so abandoned
- That
there is mold where once there was hard crust.
-
- 115
"His household, which marched out straight ahead
- With
their feet in his footprints, so turns round
- That
their toes come down where the heel has been.
-
-
"And soon there shall be seen what sort of harvest
- Bad
tillage causes, when the tare complains
- 120
Of being thrown out from the granary bin.
-
-
"I say, however, should one search our volume
- Leaf
by leaf, he might still find a page
- On
which he’d read, ‘I am what I was always.’
-
-
"But not from Acquasparta or Casale
- 125
Shall that page come, for one ignores the text,
- The
other reads tight strictures into it.
-
-
"I am the living soul of Bonaventure
- From
Bagnorea, who in high office
-
Always put the temporal cares behind.
-
- 130
"Here are Illuminato and Augustine,
- Who
were among the first poor barefoot brothers
- Who
with the cord made themselves friends of God.
-
-
"Hugh of Saint Victor is here with them as well,
- And
Peter Comestor and Peter of Spain
- 135
Who down on earth sheds light in his twelve books.
-
-
"Nathan the prophet, Anselm, Chrysostom
- The
metropolitan, and that Donatus
- Who
stooped to put his hand to the art of grammar.
-
-
"Here is Rabanus, and beside me beams
- 140
Joachim, the abbot of Calabria
- Who
was endowed with a prophetic spirit.
-
-
"The glowing courtesy of Brother Thomas
- And
his well-advised discourse have moved me
- To
celebrate so fine a paladin,
-
- 145
"And with me it has moved this company."
|
return
to Paradiso XI