The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

what deny, and call
Our knowledge or opinion; then retires
Into her private cell, when Nature rests.”

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Bound or taken captive by the image of pleasure presented to it. See Canto XVII 91. ↩

The region of Fire. Brunetto Latini, Tresor, Ch. CVIII:⁠—

“After the zone of the air is placed the fourth element. This is an orb of fire without any moisture, which extends as far as the moon, and surrounds this atmosphere in which we are. And know that above the fire is first the moon, and the other stars, which are all of the nature of fire.”

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If the soul follows the appetitus naturalis, or goes not with another foot than that of nature. ↩

In the language of the Scholastics, Form was the passing from the potential to the actual. “Whatever is Act,” says Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Quaest. LXVI Art. 1, “whatever is Act is Form; quod est actus est forma.” And again Form was divided into Substantial Form, which caused a thing to be; and Accidental Form, which caused it to be in a certain way, “as heat makes its subject not simply to be, but to be hot.”

“The soul,” says the same Angelic Doctor, Quaest. LXXVI Art. 4, “is the substantial form of man; anima est forma substantialis hominis.” It is segregate or distinct from matter, though united with it. ↩

“This” refers to the power that counsels, or the faculty of Reason. ↩

Accepts, or rejects like chaff. ↩

Dante makes Beatrice say, Paradiso V 19:⁠—

“The greatest gift that in his largess God
Creating made, and unto his own goodness
Nearest conformed, and that which he doth prize
Most highly, is the freedom of the will,
Wherewith the creatures of intelligence
Both all and only were and are endowed.”

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Near midnight of the Second Day of Purgatory. ↩

The moon was rising in the sign of the Scorpion, it being now five days after the full; and when the sun is in this sign, it is seen by the inhabitants of Rome to set between the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. ↩

Virgil, born at Pietola, near Mantua. ↩

The burden of Dante’s doubts and questions, laid upon Virgil. ↩

Rivers of Boeotia, on whose banks the Thcbans crowded at night to invoke the aid of Bacchus to give them rain for their vineyards. ↩

The word falcare, in French faucher, here translated “curve,” is a term of equitation, describing the motion of the outer foreleg of a horse in going round in a circle. It is the sweep of a mower’s scythe. ↩

Luke 1:39:⁠—

“And Mary arose in those days and went into the hillcountry with haste.”

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Caesar on his way to subdue Ilerda, now Lerida, in Spain, besieged Marseilles, leaving there part of his army under Brutus to complete the work. ↩

Nothing is known of this Abbot, not even his name. Finding him here, the commentators make bold to say that he was “slothful and deficient in good deeds.” This is like some of the definitions in the Crusca, which, instead of the interpretation of a Dantesque word, give you back the passage in which it occurs. ↩

This is the famous Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who, according to the German popular tradition, is still sitting in a cave in the Kipphaüser mountains, waiting for something to happen, while his beard has grown through the stone-table before him. In 1162 he burned and devastated Milan, Brescia, Piacenza, and Cremona. He was drowned in the Salef in Armenia, on his crusade in 1190, endeavoring to ford the river on horseback in his impatience to cross. His character is thus drawn by Milman, History of Latin Christianity, Book VIII Ch. 7, and sufficiently explains why Dante calls him “the good Barbarossa”:⁠—

“Frederick was a prince of intrepid valor, consummate prudence, unmeasured ambition, justice which hardened into severity, the ferocity of a barbarian somewhat tempered with a high chivalrous gallantry; above all, with a strength of character which subjugated alike the great temporal and ecclesiastical princes of Germany; and was prepared to assert the Imperial rights in Italy to the utmost. Of the constitutional rights of the Emperor, of his unlimited supremacy, his absolute independence of, his temporal superiority over, all other powers, even that of the Pope, Frederick proclaimed the loftiest notions. He was to the Empire what Hildebrand and Innocent were to the Popedom. His power was of God alone; to assert that it was bestowed by the successor of St. Peter was a lie, and directly contrary to the doctrine of St. Peter.”

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Alberto della Scala, Lord of Verona. He made his natural son, whose qualifications for the office Dante here enumerates, and the commentators repeat. Abbot of the Monastery of San Zeno. ↩

See Note 111. ↩

Numbers 32:11, 12:⁠—

“Surely none of the men that came out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob; because they have not wholly followed me: save Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite, and Joshua the son of Nun; for they have wholly followed the Lord.”

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The Trojans who remained with Acestes in Sicily, instead of following Aeneas to Italy. Aeneid, V:⁠—

“They enroll the matrons for the city, and set on shore as many of the people as were willing⁠—souls that had no desire of high renown.”

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The end of the Second Day. ↩

The ascent to the Fifth