Paradise: Canto XI. The Vanity Of Worldly Desires
The Vanity of worldly desires,--St. Thomas Aquinas
undertakes to solve two doubts perplexing Dante.--He narrates the
life of St. Francis of Assisi.
O insensate care of mortals, how defective are those syllogisms
which make thee downward beat thy wings! One was going after the
Laws, and one after the Aphorisms,[1] and one following the
priesthood, and one to reign by force or by sophisms, and one to
rob, and one to civic business; one, involved in pleasure of the
flesh, was wearying himself, and one was giving himself to
idleness, when I, loosed from all these things, with Beatrice,
was thus gloriously received on high in Heaven.
[1] The Aphorisms of Hippocrates, meaning here, the study of
medicine.
When each[1] had returned unto that point of the circle at which
it was at first, it stayed, as a candle in a candlestick. And
within that light which first had spoken to me I heard, as
smiling it began, making itself more clear, "Even as I am
resplendent with its radiance, so, looking into the Eternal
Light, I apprehend whence thou drawest the occasion of thy
thoughts. Thou art perplexed, and hast the wish that my speech be
bolted again in language so open and so plain that it may be
level to thy sense, where just now I said, 'where well one
fattens,' and there where I said, 'the second has not been born;'
and here is need that one distinguish well.
[1] Each of the lights which had encircled. Beatrice and Dante.
"The Providence which governs the world with that counsel, in
which every created vision is vanquished ere it reach the depth,
in order that the bride[1] of Him, who with loud cries espoused
her with His blessed blood, might go toward her beloved, secure
in herself and also more faithful to Him, ordained two princes in
her favor, who on this side and that should be to her for guides.
The one was all seraphic in ardor,[2] the other, through wisdom,
was a splendor of cherubic light[3] on earth. Of the one I will
speak, because both are spoken of in praising one, whichever be
taken, for unto one end were their works.
[1] The Church.
[2] St. Francis of Assisi
[3] St. Dominic.
"Between the Tupino and the water[1] which descends from the
hill chosen by the blessed Ubaldo, hangs the fertile slope of a
high mountain, wherefrom Perugia at Porta Sole[2] feeleth cold
and heat, while behind it Nocera and Gualdo weep because of their
heavy yoke.[3] On that slope, where it most breaks its steepness,
rose a Sun upon the world, as this one sometimes does from the
Ganges. Therefore let him who talks of that place not say
Ascesi,[4] for he would speak short, but Orient,[5] if be would
speak properly. He was not yet very far from his rising when he
began to make the earth feel some comfort from his great virtue.
For, still a youth, he ran to strife[6] with his father for a
lady such as unto whom, even as unto death, no one unlocks the
gate of pleasure; and before his spiritual court et coram
patre[7] to her he had himself united; thereafter from day to day
he loved her more ardently. She, deprived of her first
husband,[8] for one thousand and one hundred years and more,
despised and obscure, had stood without wooing till he came;[9]
nor had it availed[10] to hear, that he, who caused fear to all
the world, found her at the sound of his voice secure with
Amyclas;[11] nor had it availed to have been constant and bold,
so that where Mary remained below, she wept with Christ upon the
cross. But that I may not proceed too obscurely, take henceforth
in my diffuse speech Francis and Poverty for these lovers. Their
concord and their glad semblances made love, and wonder, and
sweet regard to be the cause of holy thoughts;[12] so that the
venerable Bernard first bared his feet,[13] and ran following
such great peace, and, running, it seemed to him that he was
slow. Oh unknown riches! oh fertile good! Egidius bares his feet
and Sylvester bares his feet, following the bridegroom; so
pleasing is the bride. Then that father and that master goes on
his way with his lady, and with that family which the humble cord
was now girding.[14] Nor did baseness of heart weigh down his
brow at being son of Pietro Bernardone,[15] nor at appearing
marvellously despised; but royally he opened his bard intention
to Innocent, and received from bim the first seal for his
Order.[16] After the poor people had increased behind him, whose
marvellous life would be better sung in glory of the heavens, the
holy purpose of this archimandrite[17] was adorned with a second
crown by the Eternal Spirit, through Honorius.[18] And when,
through thirst for martyrdom, he had preached Christ and the rest
who followed him in the proud presence of the Sultan,[19] and
because he found the people too unripe for conversion, and in
order not to stay in vain, had returned to the fruit of the
Italian grass,[20] on the rude rock,[21] between the Tiber and
the Arno, he took from Christ the last seal,[22] which his limbs
bore for two years. When it pleased Him, who had allotted him to
such great good, to draw him up to the reward which he had gained
in making himself abject, he commended his most dear lady to his
brethren as to rightful heirs, and commanded them to love her
faithfully; and from her lap, his illustrious soul willed to
depart, returning to its realm, and for his body he willed no
other bier.[23]
[1] The Chiassi, which flows from the hill chosen for his
hermitage by St. Ubaldo.
[2] The gate of Perugia, which fronts Monte Subasio, on which
Assisi lies, some fifteen miles to the south.
[3] Towns, southeast of Assisi, oppressed by their rulers.
[4] So the name Assisi was sometimes spelled, and here with a
play on ascesi (I have risen).
[5] As the sun at the vernal equinox, the sacred season of the
Creation and the Resurrection, rises in the due east or orient,
represented in the geographical system of the time by the Ganges,
so the place where this new Sun of righteousness arose should be
called Orient.
[6] Devoting himself to poverty against his father's will.
[7] Before the Bishop of Assisi, and "in presence of his
father," he renounced his worldly possessions.
[8] Christ.
[9] St. Francis was born in 1182.
[10] To procure suitors for her,
[11] When Caesar knocked at the door of Amyclas his voice caused
no alarm, because Poverty made the fisherman secure.--Lucan,
Pharsalia, V. 515 ff.
[12] In the hearts of those who behold them.
[13] The followers of Francis imitated him in going barefoot.
[14] The cord for their only girdle.
[15] Perhaps, because his father was neither noble nor famous.
[16] In or about 1210 Pope Innocent III. approved the Rule of St.
Francis.
[17] "The head of the fold:" a term of the Greek Church,
designating the head of one or more monasteries.
[18] In 1223, Honorius III. confirmed the sanction of the Order.
[19] Probably the Sultan of Egypt, at the time of the Fifth
Crusade, in 1219.
[20] To the harvest of good grain in Italy.
[21] Mount Alvernia.
[22] The Stigmata.
[23] St. Francis died in 1226.
"Think now of what sort was he,[1] who was a worthy colleague to
keep the bark of Peter on the deep sea to its right aim; and this
was our Patriarch:[2] wherefore thou canst see that whoever
follows him as he commands loads good merchandise. But his flock
has become so greedy of strange food that. it cannot but be
scattered over diverse meadows; and as his sheep, remote and
vagabond, go farther from him, the emptier of milk they return to
the fold. Truly there are some of them who fear the harm, and
keep close to the shepherd; but they are so few that little cloth
suffices for their cowls. Now if my words are not obscure, if thy
hearing has been attentive, if thou recallest to mind that which
I have said, thy wish will be content in part, because thou wilt
see the plant wherefrom they are hewn,[3] and thou wilt see how
the wearer of the thong reasons--'Where well one fattens if one
does not stray.'
[1] How holy he must have been.
[2] St. Dominic.
[3] The plant of which the words are splinters or chips; in other
terms, "thou wilt understand the whole ground of my assertion,
and thou wilt see what a Dominican, wearer of the leather thong
of the Order, means, when he says that the flock of Dominic
fatten, if they stray not from the road on which he leads them."
PARADISE
CANTO XII. Second circle of the spirits of wise religious men,
doctors of the Church and teachers.--St. Bonaventura narrates the
life of St. Dominic, and tells the names of those who form the
circle with him.
Soon as the blessed flame uttered the last word of its speech the
holy mill-stone[1] began to rotate, and had not wholly turned in
its gyration before another enclosed it with a circle, and
matched motion with motion, song with song; song which in those
sweet pipes so surpasses our Muses, our Sirens, as a primal
splendor that which it reflects.[2] As two bows parallel and of
like colors are turned across a thin cloud when Juno gives the
order to her handmaid[3] (the outer one born of that within,
after the manner of the speech of that wandering one[4] whom love
consumed, as the sun does vapors), and make the people here
presageful, because of the covenant which God established with
Noah concerning the world, that it is nevermore to be flooded; so
the two garlands of those sempiternal roses turned around us, and
so the outer responded to the inner. After the dance and the
other great festivity, alike of the singing and of the flaming,
light with light joyous and courteous, had become quiet together
at an instant and with one will (just as the eyes which must
needs together close and open to the pleasure that moves them),
from the heart of one of the new lights a voice proceeded, which
made me seem as the needle to the star in turning me to its place
and it began,[5] "The love which makes me beautiful draws me to
speak of the other leader by whom[6] so well has been spoken here
of mine. It is fit that where one is the other be led in, so that
as they served in war with one another, together likewise may
their glory shine.
[1] The garland of spirits encircling Beatrice and Dante.
[2] As an original ray is brighter than one reflected.
[3] Iris.
[4] Echo.
[5] It is St. Bonaventura, the biographer of St. Francis, who
speaks. He became General of the Order in 1256, and died in 1276.
[6] By whom, through one of his brethren.
"The army of Christ, which it had cost so dear to arm afresh,[1]
was moving slow, mistrustful, and scattered, behind the
standard,[2] when the Emperor who forever reigns provided for the
soldiery that was in peril, through grace alone, not because it
was worthy, and, as has been said, succored his Bride with two
champions, by whose deed, by whose word, the people gone astray
were rallied.
[1] The elect, who had lost grace through Adam's sin, were armed
afresh by the costly sacirifice of the Son of God.
[2] The Cross.
"In that region where the sweet west wind rises to open the new
leaves wherewith Europe is seen to reclothe herself, not very far
from the beating of the waves behind which, over their long
course, the sun sometimes bides himself to all men, sits the
fortunate Callaroga, under the protection of the great shield on
which the Lion is subject and subjugates.[1] Therein was born the
amorous lover of the Christian faith, the holy athlete, benignant
to his own, and to his enemies harsh.[2] And when it was created,
his mind was so replete with living virtue, that in his mother it
made her a prophetess.[3] After the espousals between him and the
faith were completed at the sacred font, where they dowered each
other with mutual safety, the lady who gave the assent for him
saw in a dream the marvellous fruit which was to proceed from him
and from his heirs;[4] and in order that he might be spoken of
as he was,[5] a spirit went forth from here[6] to name him with
the possessive of Him whose he wholly was. Dominic[7] he was
called; and I speak of him as of the husbandman whom Christ
elected to his garden to assist him. Truly he seemed the
messenger and familiar of Christ; for the first love that was
manifest in him was for the first counsel that Christ gave.[8]
Oftentimes was he found by his nurse upon the ground silent and
awake, as though he said, 'I am come for this.' O father of him
truly Felix! Omother of him truly Joan, if this, being
interpreted, means as is said![9]
[1] The shield of Castile, on which two lions and two castles are
quartered, one lion below and one above.
[2] St. Dominic, born in 1170.
[3] His mother dreamed that she gave birth to a dog, black and
white in color, with a lighted torch in its mouth, which set the
world on fire; symbols of the black and white robe of the Order,
and of the flaming zeal of its brethren. Hence arose a play of
words on their name, Domini cani, "the dogs of the Lord."
[4] The godmother of Dominic saw in dream a star on the forehead
and another on the back of the head of the child, signifying the
light that should stream from him over East and West.
[5] That his name might express his nature.
[6] From heaven.
[7] Dominicus, the possessive of Dominus, "Belonging to the
Lord."
[8] "Sell that thou hast and give to the poor."--Matthew, xix.
21.
[9] Felix, signifying "happy," and Joanna, "full of grace."
"Not for the world,[1] for which men now toil, following him
of Ostia and Thaddeus,[2] but for the love of the true manna, be
became in short time a great teacher, such that he set himself to
go about the vineyard, which quickly fades if the vinedresser is
bad; and of the Seat[3] which was formerly more benign unto the
righteous poor (not through itself but through him who sits there
and degenerates[4]), he asked not to dispense or two or three
for six,[5] not the fortune of the first vacancy, non decimas,
quae sunt pauperum Dei,[6] but leave to fight against the errant
world for that seed[7] of which four and twenty plants are
girding thee. Then with doctrine and with will, together with the
apostolic office,[8] he went forth like a torrent which a lofty
vein pours out, and on the heretical stocks his onset smote with
most vigor there where the resistance was the greatest. From him
proceeded thereafter divers streams wherewith the catholic garden
is watered, so that its bushes stand more living.
[1] The goods of this world.
[2] Henry of Susa, cardinal of Ostia, who wrote a much studied
commentary on the Decretals, and Thaddeus of Bologna, who, says
Giovanni Villani, "was the greatest physician in Christendom."
The thought is the same as that at the beginning of Canto XI,
where Dante speaks of "one following the Laws, and one the
Aphorisms."
[3] The Papal chair.
[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 tithes which belong to God's poor."
[7] The true faith; "the seed is the word of God."--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 circumference 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
undertakes to solve two doubts perplexing Dante.--He narrates the
life of St. Francis of Assisi.
O insensate care of mortals, how defective are those syllogisms
which make thee downward beat thy wings! One was going after the
Laws, and one after the Aphorisms,[1] and one following the
priesthood, and one to reign by force or by sophisms, and one to
rob, and one to civic business; one, involved in pleasure of the
flesh, was wearying himself, and one was giving himself to
idleness, when I, loosed from all these things, with Beatrice,
was thus gloriously received on high in Heaven.
[1] The Aphorisms of Hippocrates, meaning here, the study of
medicine.
When each[1] had returned unto that point of the circle at which
it was at first, it stayed, as a candle in a candlestick. And
within that light which first had spoken to me I heard, as
smiling it began, making itself more clear, "Even as I am
resplendent with its radiance, so, looking into the Eternal
Light, I apprehend whence thou drawest the occasion of thy
thoughts. Thou art perplexed, and hast the wish that my speech be
bolted again in language so open and so plain that it may be
level to thy sense, where just now I said, 'where well one
fattens,' and there where I said, 'the second has not been born;'
and here is need that one distinguish well.
[1] Each of the lights which had encircled. Beatrice and Dante.
"The Providence which governs the world with that counsel, in
which every created vision is vanquished ere it reach the depth,
in order that the bride[1] of Him, who with loud cries espoused
her with His blessed blood, might go toward her beloved, secure
in herself and also more faithful to Him, ordained two princes in
her favor, who on this side and that should be to her for guides.
The one was all seraphic in ardor,[2] the other, through wisdom,
was a splendor of cherubic light[3] on earth. Of the one I will
speak, because both are spoken of in praising one, whichever be
taken, for unto one end were their works.
[1] The Church.
[2] St. Francis of Assisi
[3] St. Dominic.
"Between the Tupino and the water[1] which descends from the
hill chosen by the blessed Ubaldo, hangs the fertile slope of a
high mountain, wherefrom Perugia at Porta Sole[2] feeleth cold
and heat, while behind it Nocera and Gualdo weep because of their
heavy yoke.[3] On that slope, where it most breaks its steepness,
rose a Sun upon the world, as this one sometimes does from the
Ganges. Therefore let him who talks of that place not say
Ascesi,[4] for he would speak short, but Orient,[5] if be would
speak properly. He was not yet very far from his rising when he
began to make the earth feel some comfort from his great virtue.
For, still a youth, he ran to strife[6] with his father for a
lady such as unto whom, even as unto death, no one unlocks the
gate of pleasure; and before his spiritual court et coram
patre[7] to her he had himself united; thereafter from day to day
he loved her more ardently. She, deprived of her first
husband,[8] for one thousand and one hundred years and more,
despised and obscure, had stood without wooing till he came;[9]
nor had it availed[10] to hear, that he, who caused fear to all
the world, found her at the sound of his voice secure with
Amyclas;[11] nor had it availed to have been constant and bold,
so that where Mary remained below, she wept with Christ upon the
cross. But that I may not proceed too obscurely, take henceforth
in my diffuse speech Francis and Poverty for these lovers. Their
concord and their glad semblances made love, and wonder, and
sweet regard to be the cause of holy thoughts;[12] so that the
venerable Bernard first bared his feet,[13] and ran following
such great peace, and, running, it seemed to him that he was
slow. Oh unknown riches! oh fertile good! Egidius bares his feet
and Sylvester bares his feet, following the bridegroom; so
pleasing is the bride. Then that father and that master goes on
his way with his lady, and with that family which the humble cord
was now girding.[14] Nor did baseness of heart weigh down his
brow at being son of Pietro Bernardone,[15] nor at appearing
marvellously despised; but royally he opened his bard intention
to Innocent, and received from bim the first seal for his
Order.[16] After the poor people had increased behind him, whose
marvellous life would be better sung in glory of the heavens, the
holy purpose of this archimandrite[17] was adorned with a second
crown by the Eternal Spirit, through Honorius.[18] And when,
through thirst for martyrdom, he had preached Christ and the rest
who followed him in the proud presence of the Sultan,[19] and
because he found the people too unripe for conversion, and in
order not to stay in vain, had returned to the fruit of the
Italian grass,[20] on the rude rock,[21] between the Tiber and
the Arno, he took from Christ the last seal,[22] which his limbs
bore for two years. When it pleased Him, who had allotted him to
such great good, to draw him up to the reward which he had gained
in making himself abject, he commended his most dear lady to his
brethren as to rightful heirs, and commanded them to love her
faithfully; and from her lap, his illustrious soul willed to
depart, returning to its realm, and for his body he willed no
other bier.[23]
[1] The Chiassi, which flows from the hill chosen for his
hermitage by St. Ubaldo.
[2] The gate of Perugia, which fronts Monte Subasio, on which
Assisi lies, some fifteen miles to the south.
[3] Towns, southeast of Assisi, oppressed by their rulers.
[4] So the name Assisi was sometimes spelled, and here with a
play on ascesi (I have risen).
[5] As the sun at the vernal equinox, the sacred season of the
Creation and the Resurrection, rises in the due east or orient,
represented in the geographical system of the time by the Ganges,
so the place where this new Sun of righteousness arose should be
called Orient.
[6] Devoting himself to poverty against his father's will.
[7] Before the Bishop of Assisi, and "in presence of his
father," he renounced his worldly possessions.
[8] Christ.
[9] St. Francis was born in 1182.
[10] To procure suitors for her,
[11] When Caesar knocked at the door of Amyclas his voice caused
no alarm, because Poverty made the fisherman secure.--Lucan,
Pharsalia, V. 515 ff.
[12] In the hearts of those who behold them.
[13] The followers of Francis imitated him in going barefoot.
[14] The cord for their only girdle.
[15] Perhaps, because his father was neither noble nor famous.
[16] In or about 1210 Pope Innocent III. approved the Rule of St.
Francis.
[17] "The head of the fold:" a term of the Greek Church,
designating the head of one or more monasteries.
[18] In 1223, Honorius III. confirmed the sanction of the Order.
[19] Probably the Sultan of Egypt, at the time of the Fifth
Crusade, in 1219.
[20] To the harvest of good grain in Italy.
[21] Mount Alvernia.
[22] The Stigmata.
[23] St. Francis died in 1226.
"Think now of what sort was he,[1] who was a worthy colleague to
keep the bark of Peter on the deep sea to its right aim; and this
was our Patriarch:[2] wherefore thou canst see that whoever
follows him as he commands loads good merchandise. But his flock
has become so greedy of strange food that. it cannot but be
scattered over diverse meadows; and as his sheep, remote and
vagabond, go farther from him, the emptier of milk they return to
the fold. Truly there are some of them who fear the harm, and
keep close to the shepherd; but they are so few that little cloth
suffices for their cowls. Now if my words are not obscure, if thy
hearing has been attentive, if thou recallest to mind that which
I have said, thy wish will be content in part, because thou wilt
see the plant wherefrom they are hewn,[3] and thou wilt see how
the wearer of the thong reasons--'Where well one fattens if one
does not stray.'
[1] How holy he must have been.
[2] St. Dominic.
[3] The plant of which the words are splinters or chips; in other
terms, "thou wilt understand the whole ground of my assertion,
and thou wilt see what a Dominican, wearer of the leather thong
of the Order, means, when he says that the flock of Dominic
fatten, if they stray not from the road on which he leads them."
PARADISE
CANTO XII. Second circle of the spirits of wise religious men,
doctors of the Church and teachers.--St. Bonaventura narrates the
life of St. Dominic, and tells the names of those who form the
circle with him.
Soon as the blessed flame uttered the last word of its speech the
holy mill-stone[1] began to rotate, and had not wholly turned in
its gyration before another enclosed it with a circle, and
matched motion with motion, song with song; song which in those
sweet pipes so surpasses our Muses, our Sirens, as a primal
splendor that which it reflects.[2] As two bows parallel and of
like colors are turned across a thin cloud when Juno gives the
order to her handmaid[3] (the outer one born of that within,
after the manner of the speech of that wandering one[4] whom love
consumed, as the sun does vapors), and make the people here
presageful, because of the covenant which God established with
Noah concerning the world, that it is nevermore to be flooded; so
the two garlands of those sempiternal roses turned around us, and
so the outer responded to the inner. After the dance and the
other great festivity, alike of the singing and of the flaming,
light with light joyous and courteous, had become quiet together
at an instant and with one will (just as the eyes which must
needs together close and open to the pleasure that moves them),
from the heart of one of the new lights a voice proceeded, which
made me seem as the needle to the star in turning me to its place
and it began,[5] "The love which makes me beautiful draws me to
speak of the other leader by whom[6] so well has been spoken here
of mine. It is fit that where one is the other be led in, so that
as they served in war with one another, together likewise may
their glory shine.
[1] The garland of spirits encircling Beatrice and Dante.
[2] As an original ray is brighter than one reflected.
[3] Iris.
[4] Echo.
[5] It is St. Bonaventura, the biographer of St. Francis, who
speaks. He became General of the Order in 1256, and died in 1276.
[6] By whom, through one of his brethren.
"The army of Christ, which it had cost so dear to arm afresh,[1]
was moving slow, mistrustful, and scattered, behind the
standard,[2] when the Emperor who forever reigns provided for the
soldiery that was in peril, through grace alone, not because it
was worthy, and, as has been said, succored his Bride with two
champions, by whose deed, by whose word, the people gone astray
were rallied.
[1] The elect, who had lost grace through Adam's sin, were armed
afresh by the costly sacirifice of the Son of God.
[2] The Cross.
"In that region where the sweet west wind rises to open the new
leaves wherewith Europe is seen to reclothe herself, not very far
from the beating of the waves behind which, over their long
course, the sun sometimes bides himself to all men, sits the
fortunate Callaroga, under the protection of the great shield on
which the Lion is subject and subjugates.[1] Therein was born the
amorous lover of the Christian faith, the holy athlete, benignant
to his own, and to his enemies harsh.[2] And when it was created,
his mind was so replete with living virtue, that in his mother it
made her a prophetess.[3] After the espousals between him and the
faith were completed at the sacred font, where they dowered each
other with mutual safety, the lady who gave the assent for him
saw in a dream the marvellous fruit which was to proceed from him
and from his heirs;[4] and in order that he might be spoken of
as he was,[5] a spirit went forth from here[6] to name him with
the possessive of Him whose he wholly was. Dominic[7] he was
called; and I speak of him as of the husbandman whom Christ
elected to his garden to assist him. Truly he seemed the
messenger and familiar of Christ; for the first love that was
manifest in him was for the first counsel that Christ gave.[8]
Oftentimes was he found by his nurse upon the ground silent and
awake, as though he said, 'I am come for this.' O father of him
truly Felix! Omother of him truly Joan, if this, being
interpreted, means as is said![9]
[1] The shield of Castile, on which two lions and two castles are
quartered, one lion below and one above.
[2] St. Dominic, born in 1170.
[3] His mother dreamed that she gave birth to a dog, black and
white in color, with a lighted torch in its mouth, which set the
world on fire; symbols of the black and white robe of the Order,
and of the flaming zeal of its brethren. Hence arose a play of
words on their name, Domini cani, "the dogs of the Lord."
[4] The godmother of Dominic saw in dream a star on the forehead
and another on the back of the head of the child, signifying the
light that should stream from him over East and West.
[5] That his name might express his nature.
[6] From heaven.
[7] Dominicus, the possessive of Dominus, "Belonging to the
Lord."
[8] "Sell that thou hast and give to the poor."--Matthew, xix.
21.
[9] Felix, signifying "happy," and Joanna, "full of grace."
"Not for the world,[1] for which men now toil, following him
of Ostia and Thaddeus,[2] but for the love of the true manna, be
became in short time a great teacher, such that he set himself to
go about the vineyard, which quickly fades if the vinedresser is
bad; and of the Seat[3] which was formerly more benign unto the
righteous poor (not through itself but through him who sits there
and degenerates[4]), he asked not to dispense or two or three
for six,[5] not the fortune of the first vacancy, non decimas,
quae sunt pauperum Dei,[6] but leave to fight against the errant
world for that seed[7] of which four and twenty plants are
girding thee. Then with doctrine and with will, together with the
apostolic office,[8] he went forth like a torrent which a lofty
vein pours out, and on the heretical stocks his onset smote with
most vigor there where the resistance was the greatest. From him
proceeded thereafter divers streams wherewith the catholic garden
is watered, so that its bushes stand more living.
[1] The goods of this world.
[2] Henry of Susa, cardinal of Ostia, who wrote a much studied
commentary on the Decretals, and Thaddeus of Bologna, who, says
Giovanni Villani, "was the greatest physician in Christendom."
The thought is the same as that at the beginning of Canto XI,
where Dante speaks of "one following the Laws, and one the
Aphorisms."
[3] The Papal chair.
[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 tithes which belong to God's poor."
[7] The true faith; "the seed is the word of God."--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 circumference 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
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