but when he found none there would take Christ’s pardon,
rather than waste his labors, he turned back
to pick the fruit of the Italian garden.
On the crag between Tiber and Arno then, in tears
of love and joy, he took Christ’s final seal,
the holy wounds of which he wore two years.
When God, whose loving will had sent him forward
to work such good, was pleased to call him back
to where the humble soul has its reward,
he, to his brothers, as to rightful heirs
commended his dearest Lady, and he bade them
to love her faithfully for all their years.
Then from her bosom, that dear soul of grace
willed its return to its own blessed kingdom;
and wished its flesh no other resting place.
Think now what manner of man was fit to be
his fellow helmsman, holding Peter’s ship
straight to its course across the dangerous sea.
Such was our patriarch. Hence, all who rise
and follow his command will fill the hold,
as you can see, with fruits of paradise.
But his flock has grown so greedy for the taste
of new food that it cannot help but be
far scattered as it wanders through the waste.
The more his vagabond and distant sheep
wander from him, the less milk they bring back
when they return to the fold. A few do keep
close to the shepherd, knowing what wolf howls
in the dark around them, but they are so few
it would take little cloth to make their cowls.
Now, if my words have not seemed choked and blind,
if you have listened to me and taken heed,
and if you will recall them to your mind,
your wish will have been satisfied in part,
for you will see how the good plant is broken,
and what rebuke my words meant to impart
when I referred, a while back in our talk,
to ‘where all plenty is’ and to ‘bare rock.’ ”
NOTES
15. rack: Dante says “candellier,” which may be taken to mean candlestick, but equally to mean the candle-racks that hold votive candles in churches. The image of the souls as twelve votive candles in a circular rack is certainly apter than that of twelve candles in separate candlesticks.
25-26. leads to . . . all plenty: X, 95. no mortal ever: X, 114.
28-42. INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS. Compare the words of Bonaventure in introducing the life of St. Dominic, XII, 31-45.
31. the Bride: The Church.
32. crying from on high: Matthew, xxvii, 46, 50; Mark, xv, 34, 37; Luke, xxiii, 46; and John, xix, 26-30—all record Christ’s dying cries upon the cross.
34. two Princes, one on either side: St. Dominic and St. Francis. Dominic, on one side (line 39 equates his wisdom with the cherubic), by his wisdom and doctrinal clarity made the Church secure within itself by helping to defend it against error and heresy. Francis, on the other (line 37 ascribes to him seraphic ardor of love), set the example that made her more faithfully the bride of Christ.
43-51. ASSISI AND THE BIRTH OF ST. FRANCIS. The passage, in Dante’s characteristic topophiliac style, is full of local allusions, not all of them relevant to St. Francis, but all describing the situation of Assisi, his birthplace. Perugia stands to the east of the upper Tiber. The Tiber at this point runs approximately north to south. Mt. Subasio, a long and many-spurred crest, runs roughly parallel to the Tiber on the west. Assisi is on the side of Subasio, and it was from Assisi that the sun of St. Francis rose to the world, as “this one” (the actual sun in which Dante and Aquinas are standing) rises from the Ganges. The upper Ganges crosses the Tropic of Cancer, the line of the summer solstice. When the sun rises from the Ganges, therefore, it is at its brightest. the Tupino: Skirts Mt. Subasio on the south and flows roughly west into the Tiber. the little race: The Chiascio [KYAH-show] flows south along the length of Subasio and empties into the Tupino below Assisi. blessèd Ubaldo: St. Ubaldo (1084-1160), Bishop of Gubbio from 1129. He chose a hill near Gubbio as a hermitage in which to end his days, but died before he could retire there. Porta Sole: Perugia’s west gate. It faces Mt. Subasio. In summer its slopes reflect the sun’s rays through Porta Sole; in winter, covered with snow, they send the cold wind. Nocera [NAW-tcheh-ra], Gualdo [GWAHL-DOE]: Towns on the other side of (behind) Subasio. Their heavy yoke may be their subjugation by Perugia, or Dante may have meant by it the taxes imposed by Robert of Naples and his Spanish brigands.
51-54. It is such passages that certify the failures of all translation. Ascesi, which can mean “I have risen,” was a common name for Assisi in Dante’s day. Oriente, of course, is the point at which the sun rises. Let no man, therefore, call Assisi “I have risen” (i.e., a man has risen), but let him call it, rather, the dawning east of the world (a sun has risen).
55 ff. yet far distant: While he was still young. The phrasing continues the figure of the new-risen sun.
Francis, born Bernardone, was the son of a relatively prosperous baker and, early in life, assisted his father. In a skirmish between Assisi and Perugia he was taken prisoner and later released. On his return to Assisi (he was then twenty-four) he abandoned all worldly affairs and gave himself entirely to religious works.
a boy yet: Here, as in line 55, Aquinas is overdoing it a bit: twenty-four is a bit old for being a boy yet. that lady: Poverty. his own father’s wrath: In 1207 (Francis was then twenty-five) he sold one of his father’s horses along with a load of bread and gave the money to a church. In a rage, his father forced the church to return the money, called Francis before the Bishop of Assisi, and there demanded that he renounce his right to inherit. Francis not only agreed gladly but removed his clothes and gave them back to his father saying, “Until this hour I called you my father on earth; from this hour I can say in full truth ‘our Father which art in Heaven.’ ”
he married: In his “Hymn to Poverty” Francis himself celebrated his union to Poverty as a marriage. He had married her before the diocesan court of Assisi, et coram patre (before the court, i.e., in the legal presence of his father). The marriage was solemnized by his renunciation of all possessions.
64-66. her First Groom: Christ. he: St. Francis.
68. Amyclas: Lucan reported (see also Convivio, IV, 13) how the fisherman Amyclas lay at his ease on a bed of seaweed before Caesar himself, being so poor that he had nothing to fear from any man. Not even this report of the serenity Mistress Poverty could bring to a man, and not even the fact that she outdid even Mary in constancy, climbing the very cross with Christ, had moved any man to seek her in marriage.
79. Bernard: Bernard di Quintavalle, a wealthy neighbor, became the first disciple of Francis, kicking off his shoes to go barefoot in imitation of the master.
82-84. unknown: To men. Holy Poverty is the wealth none recognize, the plenitude none try. Egidius . . . Sylvester: The third and fourth disciples of Francis. Peter, the second disciple, seems not to have been known to Dante. the groom: Francis. the bride: Poverty.
87. the humble cord: Now a symbol of the Franciscans but then in general use by the poor as a makeshift belt.
88. grieve: At his humble origins.
93. his order first received the seal: In 1210. But Innocent III thought the proposed rule of the order so harsh that he granted only provisional approval.
96. among the seraphim: In the Empyrean, rather than in this Fourth Heaven.
97-99. Honorius . . . second crown: In 1223, Pope Honorius III gave his fully solemnized approval of the Francisan Order.
100-105. In 1219, St. Francis and eleven of his followers made a missionary pilgrimage to Greece and Egypt. Dante, whose facts are not entirely accurate, may have meant that pilgrimage; or he may have meant Francis’s projected journey to convert the Moors (1214-12
15) when Francis fell ill in southern Spain and had to give up his plans.
106-108. In 1224, on a crag of Mt. Alvernia (on the summit of which the Franciscans have reared a commemorative chapel), St. Francis received the stigmata in a rapturous vision of Christ. He wore the wound two years before his death in 1226, at the age of (probably) forty-four.
109-117. The central reference here is to Dame Poverty. her bosom: The bare ground of Poverty. no other resting place: Than in the bare ground.
119. his fellow helmsman: St. Dominic. Peter’s ship: The Church.
121-132. THE DEGENERACY OF THE DOMINICANS IN DANTE’S TIME. Aquinas was a Dominican. As a master touch to symbolize the harmony of Heaven and the unity of Franciscans and Dominicans, Dante puts into the mouth of a Dominican the praise of the life of St. Francis. That praise ended, he chooses the Dominican to lament the degeneracy of the order. In XII, Dante will have the Franciscan, St. Bonaventure, praise the life of St. Dominic and lament the degeneracy of the Franciscans.
122. his command: The rule of the Dominicans. will fill the hold: With the treasures of Paradise. Dante is carrying forward the helmsman metaphor of lines 118-120, though the ship is now commanded by a patriarch. Typically, the figure changes at once to a shepherd-and-flock metaphor.
136. in part: In X, 95-96, in identifying himself as a Dominican, Aquinas said the Dominican rule “leads to where all plenty is” unless the lamb itself stray to “bare rock.” In lines 25-26, above, he refers to these words and also to his earlier statements (X, 114) about Solomon’s wisdom (that “no mortal ever rose to equal this one”). What he has now finished saying about the degeneracy of the Dominicans will satisfy part of Dante’s wish (about “plenty” and “bare rock”). The other part of his wish (about “no mortal ever rose to equal this one”) will be satisfied later.
137. the good plant: Of the Dominican rule strictly observed.
Canto XII
THE FOURTH SPHERE: THE SUN
Doctors of the Church
The Second Garland of Souls:
Bonaventure
Praise of St. Dominic
Degeneracy of Franciscans
AS SOON AS Aquinas has finished speaking the wheel of souls begins to turn, and before it has completed its first revolution it is surrounded by a SECOND GARLAND OF TWELVE SOULS.
The spokesman of this second company is ST. BONAVENTURE. In the harmonious balances of Heaven the Dominican Aquinas had spoken the praise of the life of St. Francis. In the same outgoing motion of love the Franciscan Bonaventure now speaks the PRAISE OF THE LIFE OF ST. DOMINIC. And as Aquinas had concluded by lamenting the degeneracy of the Dominican Order, so Bonaventure concludes his account with a LAMENT FOR THE DEGENERACY OF THE FRANCISCAN ORDER. He then identifies the other souls in his Garland.
So spoke the blessed flame and said no more;
and at its final word the holy millstone
began revolving round us as before.
And had not finished its first revolution
before a second wheel had formed around it,
matching it tone for tone, motion for motion.
As a reflection is to the source of light,
such is the best our sirens and muses sing
to the chanting of those sheaths of pure delight.
As through thin clouds or mists twin rainbows bend
parallel arcs and equal coloring
when Juno calls her handmaid to attend—
the outer band born of the inner one,
like the voice of that wandering nymph of love consumed,
as vapors are consumed by the summer sun—
whereby all men may know what God made plain
in the pledge he gave to Noah that the waters
of the great deluge would not come again—
just so, those sempiternal roses wove
their turning garland round us, and the outer
answered the inner with the voice of love.
And when the exalted festival and dance
of love and rapture, sweet song to sweet song,
and radiance to flashing radiance,
had in a single instant fallen still
with one accord—as our two eyes make one,
being moved to open and close by a single will—
from one of those new splendors a voice came;
and as the North Star draws a needle’s point,
so was my soul drawn to that glorious flame.
Thus he began: “The love that makes me shine
moves me to speak now of that other leader
through whom so much good has been said of mine.
When one is mentioned the other ought to be;
for they were militant in the same cause
and so should shine in one light and one glory.
The troops of Christ, rearmed at such great cost,
were struggling on behind the Holy Standard,
fearful, and few, and laggard, and half lost,
when the Emperor who reigns eternally—
of His own grace and not for their own merit—
took thought of his imperiled soldiery;
and, as you have heard said, He sent His bride
two champions by whose teachings and example
the scattered companies were reunified.
In the land to which the West wind, soft and glad,
returns each Spring to open the new leaves
with which, soon, all of Europe will be clad,
at no great distance from the beat and bite
of those same waves behind which, in its course,
the sun, at times, hides from all mortal sight,
a fortunate village lies in the protection
of the great shield on which two lions are,
one subjugating and one in subjection.
Within its walls was born the ardent one,
true lover and true knight of the Christian faith;
bread to his followers, to his foes a stone.
His mind, from the instant it began to be,
swelled with such powers that in his mother’s womb
he made her capable of prophecy.
And when he and his Lady Faith before
the holy font had married and endowed
each other with new gifts of holy power,
the lady who had spoken for him there
saw, in a dream, the wonder-working fruit
that he and his inheritors would bear.
To speak him as he was, a power from Heaven
was moved to give him the possessive form
of His name unto Whom he was wholly given.
Dominicus he was called. Let him be known
as the good husbandman chosen by Christ
to help Him in the garden He had sown.
A fitting squire and messenger of Christ
he was, for his first love was poverty,
and such was the first counsel given by Christ.
Often his nurse found him in meditation at night on the bare floor, awake and silent, as if he were saying, ‘This is my vocation.’
O Felix his father in true ‘felicity!’
O mother truly Joan, ‘whom God has graced!’
—if the names can be translated literally!
Not as men toil today for wealth and fame,
in the manner of the Ostian and Taddeo,
but for love of the true manna, he soon became
a mighty doctor, and began to go
his rounds of that great vineyard where the vine,
if left untended, pales and cannot grow.
Before that Seat where once the poor were fed
and tended (now, through no fault of its own,
but by its degenerate occupant, corrupted)
he did not ask the right to keep as pay
three out of every six, nor a benifice,
nor decimas quae sunt pauperum Dei;
but license in the sick world there below
to battle
for that seed from which are sprung
the four and twenty plants that ring you now.
Then, will and doctrine joined, and in the light
of apostolic office, he burst forth,
like a torrent from a mountain vein, to smite
the stumps and undergrowths of heresy.
And where the thickets were least passable,
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