The Divine Comedy Volume Iii Part 7

[8] Christ.

[9] St. Francis was born in 1182.

[10] To procure suitors for her,

[11] When Caesar knocked at the door of Amyclas his voice caused no alarm, because Poverty made the fisherman secure.--Lucan, Pharsalia, V. 515 ff.

[12] In the hearts of those who behold them.

[13] The followers of Francis imitated him in going barefoot.

[14] The cord for their only girdle.

[15] Perhaps, because his father was neither n.o.ble nor famous.

[16] In or about 1210 Pope Innocent III. approved the Rule of St.

Francis.

[17] "The head of the fold:" a term of the Greek Church, designating the head of one or more monasteries.

[18] In 1223, Honorius III. confirmed the sanction of the Order.

[19] Probably the Sultan of Egypt, at the time of the Fifth Crusade, in 1219.

[20] To the harvest of good grain in Italy.

[21] Mount Alvernia.

[22] The Stigmata.

[23] St. Francis died in 1226.

"Think now of what sort was he,[1] who was a worthy colleague to keep the bark of Peter on the deep sea to its right aim; and this was our Patriarch:[2] wherefore thou canst see that whoever follows him as he commands loads good merchandise. But his flock has become so greedy of strange food that. it cannot but be scattered over diverse meadows; and as his sheep, remote and vagabond, go farther from him, the emptier of milk they return to the fold. Truly there are some of them who fear the harm, and keep close to the shepherd; but they are so few that little cloth suffices for their cowls. Now if my words are not obscure, if thy hearing has been attentive, if thou recallest to mind that which I have said, thy wish will be content in part, because thou wilt see the plant wherefrom they are hewn,[3] and thou wilt see how the wearer of the thong reasons--'Where well one fattens if one does not stray.'

[1] How holy he must have been.

[2] St. Dominic.

[3] The plant of which the words are splinters or chips; in other terms, "thou wilt understand the whole ground of my a.s.sertion, and thou wilt see what a Dominican, wearer of the leather thong of the Order, means, when he says that the flock of Dominic fatten, if they stray not from the road on which he leads them."

CANTO XII. 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-stone[1] 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 surpa.s.ses 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 handmaid[3] (the outer one born of that within, after the manner of the speech of that wandering one[4] whom love consumed, as the sun does vapors), and make the people here presageful, because of the covenant which G.o.d 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 whom[6] 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 G.o.d.

[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 a.s.sent 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 here[6] to name him with the possessive of Him whose he wholly was. Dominic[7] he was called; and I speak of him as of the husbandman whom Christ elected to his garden to a.s.sist 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 G.o.dmother 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 Seat[3] which was formerly more benign unto the righteous poor (not through itself but through him who sits there and degenerates[4]), 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 seed[7] 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.