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

heard and sung the thanksgiving song for the blessed sentence of doomsday.”

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“The purified, righteous man,” says Tertullian, “has become a coin of the Lord, and has the impress of his King stamped upon him.” ↩

The Old and New Testaments. ↩

In the Middle Ages titles of nobility were given to the saints and to other renowned personages of sacred history. Thus Boccaccio, in his story of Fra Cipolla, Decameron, Gior. VI Nov. 10, speaks of the Baron Messer Santo Antonio; and in Juan Lorenzo’s “Poema de Alexandra,” we have Don Job, Don Bacchus, and Don Satan. ↩

The word donnea, which I have rendered “like a lover plays,” is from the Provençal domnear. In its old French form, dosnoier, it occurs in some editions of the “Roman de la Rose,” line 1305:⁠—

“Les karoles jà remanoient;
Car tuit li plusors s’en aloient
O leurs amies umbroier
Sous ces arbres pour dosnoier.”

Chaucer translates the passage thus:⁠—

“The daunces then ended ywere;
For many of hem that daunced there
Were, with hir loves, went away
Under the trees to have hir play.”

The word expresses the gallantry of the knight towards his lady. ↩

St. John was the first to reach the sepulchre, but St. Peter the first to enter it. John 20:4:⁠—

“So they ran both together; and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he, stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie.”

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Dante, Convito, II 4, speaking of the motion of the Primum Mobile, or Crystalline Heaven, which moves all the others, says:⁠—

“From the fervent longing which each part of that ninth heaven has to be conjoined with that Divinest Heaven, the Heaven of Rest, which is next to it, it revolves therein with so great desire, that its velocity is almost incomprehensible.”

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St. Peter and the other Apostles after Pentecost. ↩

Both three and one, both plural and singular. ↩

Again the sign of the Trinity. ↩

The Heaven of the Fixed Stars continued. St. James examines Dante on Hope. ↩

Florence the Fair, Fiorenza la bella. In one of his Canzoni, Dante says:⁠—

“O mountain song of mine, thou goest thy way;
Florence my town thou shalt perchance behold,
Which bars me from itself,
Devoid of love and naked of compassion.”

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In one of Dante’s Eclogues, written at Ravenna and addressed to Giovanni del Virgilio of Bologna, who had invited him to that city to receive the poet’s crown, he says:⁠—

“Were it not better, on the banks of my native Arno, if ever I should return thither, to adorn and hide beneath the interwoven leaves my triumphal gray hairs, which once were golden?⁠ ⁠… When the bodies that wander round the earth, and the dwellers among the stars, shall be revealed in my song, as the infernal realm has been, then it will delight me to encircle my head with ivy and with laurel.”

It would seem from this extract that Dante’s hair had once been light, and not black, as Boccaccio describes it.

See also the Extract from the Convito. ↩

This allusion to the church of San Giovanni, where Dante was baptized, and which in Inferno XIX 17 he calls “il mio bel San Giovanni,” is a fitting prelude to the canto in which St. John is to appear. ↩

As described in Canto XXIV 152:⁠—

“So, giving me its benediction, singing,
Three times encircled me, when I was silent,
The apostolic light.”

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The band or carol in which St. Peter was. James 1:18:⁠—

“That we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures.”

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St. James, to whose tomb at Compostella, in Galicia, pilgrimages were and are still made. The legend says that the body of St. James was put on board a ship and abandoned to the sea; but the ship, being guided by an angel, landed safely in Galicia. There the body was buried; but in the course of time the place of its burial was forgotten, and not discovered again till the year 800, when it was miraculously revealed to a friar.

Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, I 211, says:⁠—

“Then they caused the body of the saint to be transported to Compostella; and in consequence of the surprising miracles which graced his shrine, he was honored not merely in Galicia, but throughout all Spain. He became the patron saint of the Spaniards, and Compostella, as a place of pilgrimage, was renowned throughout Europe. From all countries bands of pilgrims resorted there, so that sometimes there were no less than a hundred thousand in one year. The military order of Saint Jago, enrolled by Don Alphonso for their protection, became one of the greatest and richest in Spain.

“Now, if I should proceed to recount all the wonderful deeds enacted by Santiago in behalf of his chosen people, they would fill a volume. The Spanish historians number thirty-eight visible apparitions, in which this glorious saint descended from heaven in person, and took the command of their armies against the Moors.”

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Before me. ↩

James 1:5 and 17:⁠—

“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.⁠ ⁠… Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

In this line, intead of largezza, some editions read allegrezza; but as James describes the bounties