The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri [best thriller novels of all time TXT] 📗

not of divine inspiration. As in Canto VI 118:⁠—

“But in commensuration of our wages
With our desert is portion of our joy,
Because we see them neither less nor greater.”

↩

The Emperor Trajan, whose soul was saved by the prayers of St. Gregory. For the story of the poor widow, see Purgatorio X 73, and Note 710. ↩

King Hezekiah. ↩

2 Kings 20:11:⁠—

“And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord; and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.”

↩

Constantine, who transferred the seat of empire, the Roman laws, and the Roman standard to Byzantium, thus in a poetic sense becoming a Greek. ↩

This refers to the supposed gift of Constantine to Pope Sylvester, known in ecclesiastical history as the patrimony of Saint Peter. Inferno XXI 115:⁠—

“Ah, Constantine! of how much woe was mother,
Not thy conversion, but that marriage-dower
Which the first wealthy Father took from thee!”

↩

William the Second, surnamed the Good, son of Robert Guiscard, and king of Apulia and Sicily, which kingdoms were then lamenting the living presence of such kings as Charles the Lame, “the Cripple of Jerusalem,” king of Apulia, and Frederick of Aragon, king of Sicily.

“King Guilielmo,” says the Ottimo, “was just and reasonable, loved his subjects, and kept them in such peace, that living in Sicily might then be esteemed living in a terrestrial paradise. He was liberal to all, and proportioned his bounties to the virtue [of the receiver]. And he had this rule, that if a vicious or evil-speaking courtier came to his court, he was immediately noticed by the masters of ceremony, and provided with gifts and robes, so that he might have a cause to depart. If he was wise, he departed; if not, he was politely dismissed.” The Vicar of Wakefield seems to have followed the example of the good King William, for he says: “When any one of our relations was found to be a person of very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house I ever took care to lend him a ridingcoat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.” ↩

A Trojan hero slain at the sack of Troy. Aeneid, II 426:⁠—

“Ripheus also falls, the most just among the Trojans, and most observant of the right.”

Venturi thinks that, if Dante must needs introduce a Pagan into Paradise, he would have done better to have chosen Aeneas, who was the hero of hismaster, Virgil, and, moreover, the founder of the Roman empire. ↩

The word “expatiate” is here used in the sense given it by Milton in the following passage, Paradise Lost, I 768:⁠—

“As bees,
In spring-time when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters; they, among fresh dews and flowers,
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state-affairs.”

Landor, Pentameron, p. 92, says:⁠—

“All the verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark. In the first of them, do not you see the twinkling of her wings against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my heart (like hers) contented.”

↩

In scholastic language the quiddity of a thing is its essence, or that by which it is what it is. ↩

Matthew 11:12:⁠—

“And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”

↩

Trajan and Ripheus. ↩

Ripheus lived before Christ, and Trajan after.

Shakespeare, King Henry IV, I 1:⁠—

“In those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed,
For our advantage, on the bitter cross.”

↩

Trajan. ↩

Being in hell, he could not repent; being resuscitated, his inclinations could turn towards good. ↩

The legend of Trajan is, that by the prayers of St. Gregory the Great he was restored to life, after he had been dead four hundred years; that he lived long enough to be baptized, and was then received into Paradise. See Note 710. ↩

Ripheus.

“This is a fiction of our author,” says Buti, “as the intelligent reader may imagine; for there is no proof that Ripheus the Trojan is saved.”

↩

Faith, Hope, and Charity. Purgatorio XXIX 121:⁠—

“Three ladies at the right wheel in a circle
Came onward dancing; one so very red
That in the fire she hardly had been noted.
The second was as if her flesh and bones
Had all been fashioned out of emerald;
The third appeared as snow but newly fallen.”

↩

Romans 9:20:⁠—

“Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Had not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?”

↩

The Heaven of Saturn, where are seen the Spirits of the Contemplative.

“This planet,” says Brunetto Latini, “is cruel, felonious, and of a cold nature.” Dante, Convito, II 14, makes it the symbol of Astrology:⁠—

“The Heaven of Saturn,” he says, “has two properties by which it may be compared to Astrology. The first is the slowness of its movement through the twelve signs; for, according to the writings of Astrologers,