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

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In the words of Ben Jonson,

“Potential merit stands for actual,
Where only opportunity doth want,
Not will nor power.”

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On Mount Alvernia, St. Francis, absorbed in prayer, received in his hands and feet and breast the stigmata of Christ, that is, the wounds of the nails and the spear of the crucifixion, the final seal of the Order.

Forsyth, Italy, p. 122:⁠—

“This singular convent, which stands on the cliffs of a lofty Apennine, was built by St. Francis himself, and is celebrated for the miracle which the motto records. Here reigns all the terrible of nature⁠—a rocky mountain, a ruin of the elements, broken, sawn, and piled in sublime confusion⁠—precipices crowned with old, gloomy, visionary woods⁠—black chasms in the rock where curiosity shudders to look down⁠—haunted caverns, sanctified by miraculous crosses⁠—long excavated stairs that restore you to daylight.⁠ ⁠… On entering the Chapel of the Stigmata, we caught the religion of the place; we knelt round the rail, and gazed with a kind of local devotion at the holy spot where St. Francis received the five wounds of Christ. The whole hill is legendary ground. Here the Seraphic Father was saluted by two crows which still haunt the convent; there the Devil hurled him down a precipice, yet was not permitted to bruise a bone of him.”

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When St. Francis was dying, he desired to be buried among the malefactors at the place of execution, called the Colle d’ Inferno, or Hill of Hell. A church was afterwards built on this spot; its name was changed to Colle di Paradiso, and the body of the saint transferred thither in 1230. The popular tradition is, that it is standing upright under the principal altar of the chapel devoted to the saint. ↩

If St. Francis were as here described, what must his companion, St. Dominic, have been, who was Patriarch, or founder, of the Order to which Thomas Aquinas belonged. To the degeneracy of this Order the remainder of the canto is devoted. ↩

The Order of the Dominicans diminished in numbers, by its members going in search of prelacies and other ecclesiastical offices, till it is like a tree hacked and hewn. ↩

Buti interprets this passage differently. He says:⁠—

“Vedrai ’l corregger; that is, thou, Dante, shalt see St. Dominic, whom he calls corregger, because he wore about his waist the correggia, or leathern thong, and made his friars wear it, as St. Francis made his wear the cord;⁠—che argomenta, that is, who proves by true arguments in his constitutions, that his friars ought to study sacred theology, studying which their souls will grow fat with a good fatness; that is, with the grace of God, and the knowledge of things divine, if they do not go astray after the other sciences, which are vanity, and make the soul vain and proud.”

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The Heaven of the Sun continued. The praise of St. Dominic by St. Bonaventura, a Franciscan. ↩

By this figure Dante indicates that the circle of spirits was revolving horizontally, and not vertically. In the Convito, III 5, he makes the same comparison in speaking of the apparent motion of the sun; non a modo di mola, ma di rota, not in fashion of a millstone, but of a wheel. ↩

Ezekiel 1:28:⁠—

“As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about.”

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Iris, Juno’s messenger. ↩

Echo. Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, Addison’s Tr.:⁠—

“The Nymph, when nothing could Narcissus move,
Still dashed with blushes for her slighted love,
Lived in the shady covert of the woods,
In solitary caves and dark abodes;
Where pining wandered the rejected fair,
Till harassed out, and worn away with care,
The sounding skeleton, of blood bereft,
Besides her bones and voice had nothing left.
Her bones are petrified, her voice is found
In vaults, where still it doubles every sound.”

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Genesis 9:13:⁠—

“I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.”

And Campbell, “To the Rainbow”:⁠—

“When o’er the green undeluged earth
Heaven’s covenant thou didst shine,
How came the gray old fathers forth
To watch thy sacred sign.”

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It is the spirit of St. Bonaventura, a Franciscan, that speaks. ↩

St. Dominic, by whom, through the mouth of his follower, St. Francis has been eulogized. ↩

As in Canto XI 40:⁠—

“One will I speak of, for of both is spoken
In praising one, whichever may be taken,
Because unto one end their labors were.”

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The Church rallied and rearmed by the death of Christ against “all evil and mischief,” and “the crafts and assaults of the Devil.” ↩

In Canto XI 35:⁠—

“Two Princes did ordain in her behoof,
Which on this side and that might be her guide.”

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In the west of Europe, namely in Spain. ↩

The town of Calahorra, the birthplace of St. Dominic, is situated in the province of Old Castile. ↩

In one of the quarterings of the arms of Spain the Lion is above the Castle, in another beneath it. ↩

St. Dominic. ↩

Dante believed with Thomas Aquinas, that “the creation and infusion” of the soul were simultaneous. ↩

Before the birth of St. Dominic, his mother dreamed that she had brought forth a dog, spotted black and white, and bearing a lighted torch in his mouth; symbols of the black and white habit of the Order, and of the fiery zeal of its founder. In art the dog has become the attribute of St. Dominic, as may be seen in many paintings, and