Second circle of the spirits of wise religious men, doctors of the Church and teachers. — St. Bonaventura narrates the life of St. Dominic, and tells the names of those who form the circle with him.
Soon as the blessed flame uttered the last word of its speech the holy mill-stone1 began to rotate, and had not wholly turned in its gyration before another enclosed it with a circle, and matched motion with motion, song with song; song which in those sweet pipes so surpasses our Muses, our Sirens, as a primal splendor that which it reflects.2 As two bows parallel and of like colors are turned across a thin cloud when Juno gives the order to her handmaid3 (the outer one born of that within, after the manner of the speech of that wandering one4 whom love consumed, as the sun does vapors), and make the people here presageful, because of the covenant which God established with Noah concerning the world, that it is nevermore to be flooded; so the two garlands of those sempiternal roses turned around us, and so the outer responded to the inner. After the dance and the other great festivity, alike of the singing and of the flaming, light with light joyous and courteous, had become quiet together at an instant and with one will (just as the eyes which must needs together close and open to the pleasure that moves them), from the heart of one of the new lights a voice proceeded, which made me seem as the needle to the star in turning me to its place and it began,5 “The love which makes me beautiful draws me to speak of the other leader by whom6 so well has been spoken here of mine. It is fit that where one is the other be led in, so that as they served in war with one another, together likewise may their glory shine.
1 The garland of spirits encircling Beatrice and Dante.
2 As an original ray is brighter than one reflected.
3 Iris.
4 Echo.
5 It is St. Bonaventura, the biographer of St. Francis, who speaks. He became General of the Order in 1256, and died in 1276.
6 By whom, through one of his brethren.
“The army of Christ, which it had cost so dear to arm afresh,1 was moving slow, mistrustful, and scattered, behind the standard,2 when the Emperor who forever reigns provided for the soldiery that was in peril, through grace alone, not because it was worthy, and, as has been said, succored his Bride with two champions, by whose deed, by whose word, the people gone astray were rallied.
1 The elect, who had lost grace through Adam’s sin, were armed afresh by the costly sacirifice of the Son of God.
2 The Cross.
“In that region where the sweet west wind rises to open the new leaves wherewith Europe is seen to reclothe herself, not very far from the beating of the waves behind which, over their long course, the sun sometimes bides himself to all men, sits the fortunate Callaroga, under the protection of the great shield on which the Lion is subject and subjugates.1 Therein was born the amorous lover of the Christian faith, the holy athlete, benignant to his own, and to his enemies harsh.2 And when it was created, his mind was so replete with living virtue, that in his mother it made her a prophetess.3 After the espousals between him and the faith were completed at the sacred font, where they dowered each other with mutual safety, the lady who gave the assent for him saw in a dream the marvellous fruit which was to proceed from him and from his heirs;4 and in order that he might be spoken of as he was,5 a spirit went forth from here6 to name him with the possessive of Him whose he wholly was. Dominic7 he was called; and I speak of him as of the husbandman whom Christ elected to his garden to assist him. Truly he seemed the messenger and familiar of Christ; for the first love that was manifest in him was for the first counsel that Christ gave.8 Oftentimes was he found by his nurse upon the ground silent and awake, as though he said, ‘I am come for this.’ O father of him truly Felix! Omother of him truly Joan, if this, being interpreted, means as is said!9
1 The shield of Castile, on which two lions and two castles are quartered, one lion below and one above.
2 St. Dominic, born in 1170.
3 His mother dreamed that she gave birth to a dog, black and white in color, with a lighted torch in its mouth, which set the world on fire; symbols of the black and white robe of the Order, and of the flaming zeal of its brethren. Hence arose a play of words on their name, Domini cani, “the dogs of the Lord.”
4 The godmother of Dominic saw in dream a star on the forehead and another on the back of the head of the child, signifying the light that should stream from him over East and West.
5 That his name might express his nature.
6 From heaven.
7 Dominicus, the possessive of Dominus, “Belonging to the Lord.”
8 “Sell that thou hast and give to the poor.” — Matthew, xix. 21.
9 Felix, signifying “happy,” and Joanna, “full of grace.”
“Not for the world,1 for which men now toil, following him of Ostia and Thaddeus,2 but for the love of the true manna, be became in short time a great teacher, such that he set himself to go about the vineyard, which quickly fades if the vinedresser is bad; and of the Seat3 which was formerly more benign unto the righteous poor (not through itself but through him who sits there and degenerates4), he asked not to dispense or two or three for six,5 not the fortune of the first vacancy, non decimas, quae sunt pauperum Dei,6 but leave to fight against the errant world for that seed7 of which four and twenty plants are girding thee. Then with doctrine and with will, together with the apostolic office,8 he went forth like a torrent which a lofty vein pours out, and on the heretical stocks his onset smote with most vigor there where the resistance was the greatest. From him proceeded thereafter divers streams wherewith the catholic garden is watered, so that its bushes stand more living.
1 The goods of this world.
2 Henry of Susa, cardinal of Ostia, who wrote a much studied commentary on the Decretals, and Thaddeus of Bologna, who, says Giovanni Villani, “was the greatest physician in Christendom.” The thought is the same as that at the beginning of Canto XI, where Dante speaks of “one following the Laws, and one the Aphorisms.”
3 The Papal chair.
4 The grammatical construction is imperfect; the meaning is that the change in the temper of the see of Rome is due not to the fault of the Church itself, but to that of the Pope.
5 Not for license to compound for unjust acquisitions by de. voting a part of them to pious uses.
6 “Not the tithes which belong to God’s poor.”
7 The true faith; “the seed is the word of God.” — Luke, viii. 11.
8 The authority conferred on him by Innocent III.
If such was one wheel of the chariot on which the Holy Church defended itself and vanquished in the field its civil strife,1 surely the excellence of the other should be very plain to thee, concerning which Thomas before my coming was so courteous. But the track which the highest part of its circumference made is derelict;2 So that the mould is where the crust was.3 His household, which set forth straight with their feet upon his footprints, are so turned round that they set the forward foot on that behind;4 and soon the quality of the barvest of this bad culture shall be seen, when the tare will complain that the chest is taken from it.5 Yet I say, he who should search our volume leaf by leaf might still find a page where he would read, ‘I am that which I am wont:’ but it will not be from Casale nor from Acquasparta,6 whence such come unto the Written Rule that one flies from it, and the other contracts it.
1 The heresies within its own borders.
2 The track made by St. Francis is deserted.
3 The change of metaphor is sudden; good wine makes a crust, bad wine mould in the cask.
4 They go in an opposite direction from that followed by the saint.
5 That it is taken from the chest in the granary to be burned.
6 Frate Ubertino of Casale, the leader of a party of zealots among the Franciscans, enforced the Rule of the Order with excessive strictness; Matteo, of Acquasparta, general of the Franciscans in 1257, relaxed it.
“I am the life of Bonaventura of Bagnoregio, who in great offices always set sinister1 care behind me. Illuminato and Augustin are here, who were among the first barefoot poor that in the cord made themselves friends to God. Hugh of St. Victor2 is here with them, and Peter Mangiadore, and Peter of Spain,3 who down below shines in twelve books; Nathan the prophet, and the Metropolitan Chrysostom,4 and Anselm,5 and that Donatus6 who deigned to set his hand to the first art; Raban7 is here, and at my side shines the Calabrian abbot Joachim,8 endowed with prophetic spirit.
1 Sinister, that is, temporal.
2 Hugh (1097-1141), a noted schoolman, of the famous monastery of St. Victor at Paris.
3 Peter Mangiador, or Comestor, “the Eater,” so called as being a devourer of books. He himself wrote books famous in their time. He was chancellor of the University at Paris, and died in 1198. The Summae logicales of Peter of Spain, in twelve books, was long held in high repute. He was made Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum in 1273, and was elected Pope in 1276, taking the name of John XXI. He was killed in May, 1277, by the fall of the ceiling of the chamber in which he was sleeping in the Papal palace at Viterbo. He is the only Pope of recent times whom Dante meets in Paradise.
4 The famous doctor of the Church, patriarch of Constantinople.
5 Born about 1033 at Aosta in Piedmont, consecrated Arch. bishop of Canterbury in 1093, died 1109; magnus et subtilis doctor in theologia.”
6 The compiler of the treatise on grammar (the first of the seven arts of the Trivium. and the Quadrivium), which was in use throughout the Middle Ages.
7 Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz, in the ninth century; a great scholar and teacher, “cui similem suo tempore non habuit Ecelesia.”
8 Joachim, Abbot of Flora, whose mystic prophecies had great vogue.
“The flaming courtesy of Brother Thomas, and his discreet discourse, moved me to celebrate1 so great a paladin; and with me moved this company.”
1 Literally, “to envy;” hence, perhaps, “to admire,” “to praise,” “to celebrate;” but the meaning is doubtful.