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

in the statue over the portal of the convent of St. Mark at Florence. ↩

The godmother of St. Dominic dreamed that he had a star on the forehead, and another on the back of his head, which illuminated the east and the west. ↩

Dominicus, from Dominus, the Lord. ↩

St. Dominic, Founder of the Preaching Friars, and Persecutor of Heretics, was born in the town of Calaroga, now Calahorra, in Old Castile, in the year 1170, and died in Bologna in 1221. He was of the illustrious family of the Guzmans; in his youth he studied ten years at the University of Palencia; was devout, abstemious, charitable; sold his clothes to feed the poor, and even offered to sell himself to the Moors, to ransom the brother of a poor woman who sought his aid. In his twenty-fifth year he became a canon under the Bishop of Osma, preaching in the various churches of the province for nine years, and at times teaching theology at Palencia. In 1203 he accompanied his Bishop on a diplomatic mission to Denmark; and on his return stopped in Languedoc, to help root out the Albigensian heresy; but how far he authorized or justified the religious crusades against these persecuted people, and what part he took in them, is a contested point⁠—enough it would seem to obtain for him, from the Inquisition of Toulouse, the title of the Persecutor of Heretics.

In 1215, St. Dominic founded the Order of Preaching Friars, and in the year following was made Master of the Sacred Palace at Rome. In 1219 the centre of the Order was established at Bologna, and there, in 1221, St. Dominic died, and was buried in the church of St. Nicholas.

It has been generally supposed that St. Dominic founded the Inquisition. It would appear, however, that the special guardianship of that institution was not entrusted to the Dominicans till the year 1233, or twelve years after the death of their founder. ↩

Matthew 19:21:⁠—

“Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”

While still a young man and a student, in a season of great want, St. Dominic sold his books, and all that he possessed, to feed the poor. ↩

Felix signifying happy, and Joanna, full of grace. ↩

Henry of Susa, Cardinal, and Bishop of Ostia, and thence called Ostiense. He lived in the thirteenth century, and wrote a commentary on the Decretals or Books of Ecclesiastical Law.

Taddeo Alderotti was a distinguished physician and Professor of Bologna, who flourished in the thirteenth century, and translated the Ethics of Aristotle. Villani, VIII 66, says of him:⁠—

“At this time (1303) died in Bologna Maestro Taddeo, surnamed the Bolognese, though he was a Florentine, and our fellow-citizen; he was the greatest physicist in all Christendom.”

The allusion here is to the pursuit of wordly things, instead of divine, the same as in the introduction to Canto XI:⁠—

“One after laws and one to aphorisms.”

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Buti says that in early times the prelates used to divide the incomes of the Church into four parts; “the first, for the prelate personally; the second, for the clergy who performed the services; the third, for the embellishment of the Church; the fourth, for Christ’s poor; which division is nowadays little observed.” ↩

Pope Boniface VIII, whom Dante never forgets, and to whom he never fails to deal a blow. ↩

He did not ask of the Holy See the power of grasping six, and giving but two or three to pious uses; not the first vacant benefice; nor the tithes that belonged to God’s poor; but the right to defend the faith, of which the four-and-twenty spirits in the two circles around them were the seed. ↩

One wheel of the chariot of the Church Militant, of which St. Francis was the other. ↩

The track made by this wheel of the chariot; that is, the strict rule of St. Francis, is now abandoned by his followers. ↩

Good wine produces crust in the cask, bad wine mould. ↩

Set the points of their feet upon the heel of the footprints, showing that they walked in a direction directly opposite to that of their founder. ↩

When they find themselves in Hell, and not in Paradise. Matthew 13:30:⁠—

“Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.”

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Whoever examines one by one the members of our Order, as he would turn over a book leaf by leaf, will find some as good and faithful as the first. ↩

In 1287, Matteo d’ Acquasparta, general of the Franciscans, relaxed the severities of the Order. Later a reaction followed; and in 1310 Frate Ubaldino of Casale became the head of a party of zealots among the Franciscans who took the name of Spiritualists, and produced a kind of schism in the Order, by narrower or stricter interpretation of the Scriptures. ↩

In this line Dante uses the word life for spirit.

John of Fidanza, surnamed Bonaventura⁠—who “postponed considerations sinister,” or made things temporal subservient to things spiritual, and of whom one of his teachers said that it seemed as if in him “Adam had not sinned,”⁠—was born in 1221 at Bagnoregio, near Orvieto. In his childhood, being extremely ill, he was laid by his mother at the feet of St. Francis, and healed by the prayers of the Saint, who, when he beheld him, exclaimed, “O buona ventura!” and by this name