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

account in Paradiso XXI 139:⁠—

“Upon the mount which highest o’er the wave
Rises was I, with life or pure or sinful,
From the first hour to that which is the second,
As the sun changes quadrant, to the sixth.”

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Above the gate described in Canto IX. ↩

Virgil and Statius smile at this allusion to the dreams of poets. ↩

The Terrestrial Paradise and the Apocalyptic Procession of the Church Triumphant. ↩

Psalm 32:1:⁠—

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”

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Counted together, their steps were not a hundred in all. ↩

The Muse of Astronomy, or things celestial, represented as crowned with stars and robed in azure. Milton, Paradise Lost, VII 1, makes the same invocation:⁠—

“Descend from heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegasean wing.
The meaning, not the name, I call: for thou
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwell’st; but, heavenly-born,
Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed,
Thou with Eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play
In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song.”

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The general form which objects may have in common, and by which they resemble each other. ↩

The faculty which lends discourse to reason is apprehension, or the faculty by which things are first conceived. See Canto XVIII 22:⁠—

“Your apprehension from some real thing
An image draws, and in yourselves displays it,
So that it makes the soul turn unto it.”

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Revelation 1:12, 20:⁠—

“And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And, being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks⁠ ⁠… And the seven candlesticks⁠ ⁠… are the seven churches.”

Some commentators interpret them as the seven Sacraments of the Church; others, as the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. ↩

Delia or Diana, the moon; and her girdle, the halo, sometimes seen around it. ↩

Revelation 4:4:⁠—

“And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.”

These four and twenty elders are supposed to symbolize here the four and twenty books of the Old Testament. The crown of lilies indicates the purity of faith and doctrine. ↩

The salutation of the angel to the Virgin Mary. Luke 1:28:⁠—

“Blessed art thou among women.”

Here the words are made to refer to Beatrice. ↩

The four Evangelists, of whom the four mysterious animals in Ezekiel are regarded as symbols. Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, I 99:⁠—

“The general application of the Four Creatures to the Four Evangelists is of much earlier date than the separate and individual application of each symbol, which has varied at different times; that propounded by St. Jerome, in his commentary on Ezekiel, has since his time prevailed universally. Thus, then⁠—

“To St. Matthew was given the Cherub, or human semblance, because he begins his Gospel with the human generation of Christ; or, according to others, because in his Gospel the human nature of the Saviour is more insisted on than the divine. In the most ancient mosaics, the type is human, not angelic, for the head is that of a man with a beard.

“St. Mark has the Lion, because he has set forth the royal dignity of Christ; or, according to others, because he begins with the mission of the Baptist⁠—‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness,’⁠—which is figured by the lion: or, according to a third interpretation, the lion was allotted to St. Mark because there was, in the Middle Ages, a popular belief that the young of the lion was born dead, and after three days was awakened to vitality by the breath of its sire; some authors, however, represent the lion as vivifying his young, not by his breath, but by his roar. In either case the application is the same; the revival of the young lion was considered as symbolical of the resurrection, and Mark was commonly called the ‘historian of the resurrection.’ Another commentator observes that Mark begins his Gospel with ‘roaring,’⁠—‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness’; and ends it fearfully with a curse⁠—‘He that believeth not shall be damned’; and that, therefore, his appropriate attribute is the most terrible of beasts, the lion.

“Luke has the Ox, because he has dwelt on the priesthood of Christ, the ox being the emblem of Sacrifice.

“John has the Eagle, which is the symbol of the highest inspiration, because he soared upwards to the contemplation of the divine nature of the Saviour.”

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Ezekiel 1:4:⁠—

“And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof, as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire. Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf’s foot; and they sparkled like the color of burnished brass.”

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In Revelation 4:8, they are described as having “each of them six wings”; in Ezekiel, as having only four. ↩

The triumphal chariot is the Church. The two wheels are generally interpreted as meaning the Old and New Testaments; but Dante, Paradiso XII 106, speaks of them as St. Dominic and St. Francis. ↩

The Griffin, half lion and half eagle, is explained