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

is not in space, but was formed solely in the primal Mind, which the Greeks call Protonoe. This is that magnificence of which the Psalmist spake, when he says to God, ‘Thy magnificence is exalted above the heavens.’ ”

Milton, Paradise Lost, III 56:⁠—

“Now had the Almighty Father from above,
From the pure empyrean where he sits
High throned above all highth, bent down his eye,
His own works and their works at once to view.
About him all the sanctities of heaven
Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received
Beatitude past utterance.”

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The sixth hour is noon, and when noon is some six thousand miles away from us, the dawn is approaching, the shadow of the earth lies almost on a plane with it, and gradually the stars disappear. ↩

The nine circles of Angels, described in Canto XXVIII. ↩

From the Crystalline Heaven to the Empyrean. Dante, Convito, II 15, makes the Empyrean the symbol of Theology, the Divine Science:⁠—

“The Empyrean Heaven, by its peace, resembles the Divine Science, which is full of all peace; and which suffers no strife of opinions or sophistical arguments, because of the exceeding certitude of its subject, which is God. And of this he says to his disciples, ‘My peace I give unto you; my peace I leave you’; giving and leaving them his doctrine, which is this science of which I speak. Of this Solomon says: ‘There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number; my dove, my undefiled, is but one.’ All sciences he calls queens and paramours and virgins; and this he calls a dove, because it is without blemish of strife; and this he calls perfect, because it makes us perfectly to see the truth in which our soul has rest.”

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Philippians 4:7:⁠—

“The peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”

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The Angels and the souls of the saints. ↩

The Angels will be seen in the same aspect after the last judgment as before; but the souls of the saints will wear “the twofold garments,” spoken of in Canto XXV 92, the spiritual body, and the glorified earthly body. ↩

Daniel 7:10:⁠—

“A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him.”

And Revelation 22:1:⁠—

“And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

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The sparks are Angels, and the flowers the souls of the blessed. ↩

For the mystic virtues of the ruby, see Note 1396. ↩

For the mystic virtues of the topaz, see Note 1590. ↩

“By the length,” says Venturi, “was represented the outpouring of God upon his creatures; by the roundness, the return of this outpouring to God, as to its first source and ultimate end.”

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Dante repeats the word vidi, I saw, three times, as a rhyme, to express the intenseness of his vision. ↩

Buti thinks that this light is the Holy Ghost; Philalethes, that it is the Logos, or second person of the Trinity; Tommaseo, that it is Illuminating Grace. ↩

Didron, Christian Iconography, I 234, says:⁠—

“It was in the centre, at the very heart of this luminous eternity, that the Deity shone forth. Dante no doubt wished to describe one of those roses with a thousand petals, which light the porches of our noblest cathedrals⁠—the rose-windows, which were contemporaneous with the Florentine poet, and which he had no doubt seen in his travels in France. There in fact, in the very depth of the chalice of that rose of colored glass, the Divine Majesty shines out resplendently.”

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The word convent is here used in its original meaning of a coming together, or assembly. ↩

The name of Augustus is equivalent to Kaiser, Caesar, or Emperor. In Canto XXXII 119, the Virgin Mary is called Augusta, the Queen of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Empress of “the most just and merciful of empires.” ↩

This is Henry of Luxemburg, to whom in 1300 Dante was looking as the regenerator of Italy. He became Emperor in 1308, and died in 1311, ten years before Dante. See Note 618, and Note 1180. ↩

At the Curia Romana, or Papal court. ↩

Pope Clement V (1305⁠–⁠1314). See Note 272. The allusion here is to his double dealing with Henry of Luxemburg. See Note 1685. ↩

Among the Simoniacs in the third round of Malebolge. Of Simon Magus, Milman, History of Latin Christianity, II 97, writes thus:⁠—

“Unless Simon was in fact a personage of considerable importance during the early history of Christianity, it is difficult to account for his becoming, as he is called by Beausobre, the hero of the Romance of Heresy. If Simon was the same with that magician, a Cypriot by birth, who was employed by Felix as agent in his intrigue to detach Drusilla from her husband, this part of his character accords with the charge of licentiousness advanced both against his life and his doctrines by his Christian opponents. This is by no means improbable; and indeed, even if he was not a person thus politically prominent and influential, the early writers of Christianity would scarcely have concurred in representing him as a formidable and dangerous antagonist of the Faith as a kind of personal rival of St. Peter, without some other groundwork for the fiction besides the collision recorded in the Acts. The doctrines which are ascribed to him and to his followers, who continued to exist for several centuries, harmonize with the glimpse of his character and tenets in the writings