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

visited the Holy Land, and, withdrawing from the world, became an anchorite in the desert of Chalcida, on the borders of Arabia. Here he underwent the bodily privations and temptations, and enjoyed the spiritual triumphs, of the hermit’s life. He was “haunted by demons, and consoled by voices and visions from heaven.” In one of his letters, cited by Butler, Lives of the Saints, IX 362, he writes:⁠—

“In the remotest part of a wild and sharp desert, which, being burnt up with the heats of the scorching sun, strikes with horror and terror even the monks that inhabit it, I seemed to myself to be in the midst of the delights and assemblies of Rome. I loved solitude, that in the bitterness of my soul I might more freely bewail my miseries, and call upon my Saviour. My hideous emaciated limbs were covered with sackcloth: my skin was parched dry and black, and my flesh was almost wasted away. The days I passed in tears and groans, and when sleep overpowered me against my will, I cast my wearied bones, which hardly hung together, upon the bare ground, not so properly to give them rest, as to torture myself. I say nothing of my eating and drinking; for the monks in that desert, when they are sick, know no other drink but cold water, and look upon it as sensuality ever to eat anything dressed by fire. In this exile and prison, to which, for the fear of hell, I had voluntarily condemned myself, having no other company but scorpions and wild beasts, I many times found my imagination filled with lively representations of dances in the company of Roman ladies, as if I had been in the midst of them.⁠ ⁠… I often joined whole nights to the days, crying, sighing, and beating my breast till the desired calm returned. I feared the very cell in which I lived, because it was witness to the foul suggestions of my enemy; and being angry and armed with severity against myself, I went alone into the most secret parts of the wilderness, and if I discovered anywhere a deep valley, or a craggy rock, that was the place of my prayer, there I threw this miserable sack of my body. The same Lord is my witness, that after so many sobs and tears, after having in much sorrow looked long up to heaven, I felt most delightful comforts and interior sweetness; and these so great, that, transported and absorpt, I seemed to myself to be amidst the choirs of angels; and glad and joyful I sung to God: After Thee, O Lord, we will run in the fragrancy of thy celestial ointments.”

In another letter, cited by Montalembert, Monks of the West, Auth. Tr., I 404, he exclaims:⁠—

“O desert, enamelled with the flowers of Christ! O solitude, where those stones are born of which, in the Apocalypse, is built the city of the Great King! O retreat, which rejoicest in the friendship of God! What doest thou in the world, my brother, with thy soul greater than the world? How long wilt thou remain in the shadow of roofs, and in the smoky dungeons of cities? Believe me, I see here more of the light.”

At the end of five years he was driven from his solitude by the persecution of the Eastern monks; and lived successively in Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, Rome, and Alexandria. Finally, in 385, he returned to the Holy Land, and built a monastery at Bethlehem. Here he wrote his translation of the Scriptures, and his Lives of the Fathers of the Desert; but in 416 this monastery, and others that had risen up in its neighborhood, were burned by the Pelagians, and St. Jerome took refuge in a strong tower or fortified castle. Four years afterwards he died, and was buried in the ruins of his monastery. ↩

This truth of the simultaneous creation of mind and matter, as stated in line 29. ↩

The opinion of St. Jerome and other Fathers of the Church, that the Angels were created long ages before the rest of the universe, is refuted by Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I Quaest. LXI 3. ↩

That the Intelligences or Motors of the heavens should be so long without any heavens to move. ↩

The subject of the elements is the earth, so called as being the lowest, or underlying the others, fire, air, and water. ↩

The pride of Lucifer, who lies at the centre of the earth, towards which all things gravitate, and

“Down upon which thrust all the other rocks.”

Milton, Paradise Lost, V 856, makes the rebel angels deny that they were created by God:⁠—

“Who saw
When this creation was? Rememberest thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
We know no time when we were not as now;
Know none before us; self-begot, self-raised
By our own quickening power, when fatal course
Had circled his full orb, the birth mature
Of this our native heaven, ethereal sons.”

↩

The merit consists in being willing to receive this grace. ↩

St. Chrysostom, who in his preaching so carried away his audiences that they beat the pavement with their swords and called him the “Thirteenth Apostle,” in one of his Homilies thus upbraids the custom of applauding the preacher:⁠—

“What do your praises advantage me, when I see not your progress in virtue? Or what harm shall I receive from the silence of my auditors, when I behold the increase of their piety? The praise of the speaker is not the acclamation of his hearers, but their zeal for piety and religion; not their making a great stir in the times of hearing, but their show ing diligence at all other times. Applause, as soon as it is out of the mouth, is dispersed into the air, and vanishes; but when the hearers grow