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

Saviour. Jesus, to an Iconologist, is present in the cross as well as in the lamb, or in the lion. Chosroes flattered himself that, in possessing the cross, he possessed the Son of God, and he had it enthroned on his right hand, just as the Son is enthroned by God the Father. So also the earliest Christian artists, when making a representation of the Trinity, placed a cross beside the Father and the Holy Spirit; a cross only, without our crucified Lord. The cross did not only recall Christ to mind, but actually showed him. In Christian Iconography, Christ is actually present under the form and semblance of the cross.

“The cross is our crucified Lord in person. Where the cross is, there is the martyr, says St. Paulinus. Consequently it works miracles, as does Jesus himself: and the list of wonders operated by its power is in truth immense.⁠ ⁠…

“The world is in the form of a cross; for the east shines above our heads, the north is on the right, the south at the left, and the west stretches out beneath our feet. Birds, that they may rise in air, extend their wings in the form of a cross; men, when praying, or when beating aside the water while swimming, assume the form of across. Man differs from the inferior animals, in his power of standing erect, and extending his arms.

“A vessel, to fly upon the seas, displays her yardarms in the form of a cross, and cannot cut the waves, unless her mast stands cross-like, erect in air; finally, the ground cannot be tilled without the sacred sign, and the tau, the cruciform letter, is the letter of salvation.

“The cross, it is thus seen, has been the object of a worship and adoration resembling, if not equal to, that offered to Christ. That sacred tree is adored almost as if it were equal with God himself; a number of churches have been dedicated to it under the name of the Holy Cross. In addition to this, most of our churches, the greatest as well as the smallest, cathedrals as well as chapels, present in their ground plan the form of a cross.”

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Chaucer, Lament of Marie Magdaleine, 204:⁠—

“I, loking up unto that rufull rode,
Sawe first the visage pale of that figure;
But so pitous a sight spotted with blode
Sawe never, yet, no living creature;
So it exceded the boundes of mesure,
That mannes minde with al his wittes five
Is nothing able that paine to discrive.”

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From arm to arm of the cross, and from top to bottom. ↩

Mr. Gary here quotes Chaucer, “Wif of Bath’s Tale,” 6450:⁠—

“As thikke as motes in the sonnebeme.”

And Milton, “Penseroso,” 8:⁠—

“As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the sunbeam.”

To these Mr. Wright adds the following from Lucretius, II 113, which in Good’s Tr. runs as follows:⁠—

“Not unresembling, if aright I deem,
Those motes minute, that, when the obtrusive sun
Peeps through some crevice in the shuttered shade
The day-dark hall illuming, float amain
In his bright beam, and wage eternal war.”

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Words from a hymn in praise of Christ, say the commentators, but they do not say from what hymn. ↩

The living seals are the celestial spheres, which impress themselves on all beneath them, and increase in power as they are higher. ↩

That is, to the eyes of Beatrice, whose beauty he may seem to postpone, or regard as inferior to the splendors that surround him. He excuses himself by saying that he does not speak of them, well knowing that they have grown more beautiful in ascending. He describes them in line 33 of the next canto:⁠—

“For in her eyes was burning such a smile
That with mine own methought I touched the bottom
Both of my grace and of my Paradise!”

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Sincere in the sense of pure; as in Dryden’s line⁠—

“A joy which never was sincere till now.”

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The Heaven of Mars continued. ↩

This star, or spirit, did not, in changing place, pass out of the cross, but along the right arm and down the trunk or body of it. ↩

A light in a vase of alabaster. ↩

Aeneid, VI, Davidson’s Tr.:⁠—

“But father Anchises, deep in a verdant dale, was surveying with studious care the souls there enclosed, who were to revisit the light above; and happened to be reviewing the whole number of his race, his dear descendants, their fates and fortunes, their manners and achievements. As soon as he beheld Aeneas advancing toward him across the meads, he joyfully stretched out both his hands, and tears poured down his cheeks, and these words dropped from his mouth: Are you come at length, and has that piety experienced by your sire surmounted the arduous journey?”

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Biagioli and Fraticelli think that this ancestor of Dante, Cacciaguida, who is speaking, makes use of the Latin language because it was the language of his day in Italy. It certainly gives to the passage a certain gravity and tinge of antiquity, which is in keeping with this antique spirit and with what he afterwards says. His words may be thus translated:⁠—

“O blood of mine! O grace of God infused
Superlative! To whom as unto thee
Were ever twice the gates of heaven unclosed.”

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His longing to see Dante. ↩

The mighty volume of the Divine Mind, in which the dark or written parts are not changed by erasures, nor the white spaces by interlineations. ↩

The Pythagorean doctrine of numbers. Ritter, History of Ancient Philosophy, Morrison’s Tr., I 361, says:⁠—

“In the Pythagorean doctrine, number comprises within itself two species⁠—odd and even; it is therefore the unity of these two contraries;