Among My Books Volume Ii Part 12

[223] Purgatorio, I. 71.

[224] De Monarchia, Lib. I. -- 14.

[225] De Monarchia, Lib. I. -- 18.

[226] De Monarchia, Lib. I. -- 14.

[227] Paradiso, IX.

 

[228] Inferno, x.x.xVIII; Purgatorio, x.x.xII.

[229] See the poems of Walter Mapes (who was Archdeacon of Oxford); the "Bible Guiot," and the "Bible au seignor de Berze," Barbezan and Meon, II.

[230] De Monarchia, Lib. III. -- 8.

[231] Purgatorio, III. 133, 134.

[232] Paradiso, XXVII. 22.

[233] Purgatorio, XXVII. 18; Ottimo, Inferno, XXVIII. 55.

[234] Inferno, IX. 63; Purgatorio, VIII. 20.

[235] Purgatorio, XXIX. 131, 132.

[236] Inferno, XXII. 13, 14.

[237] De Monarchia, Lib. II. -- 4.

[238] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 4; Ib., c. 27; Aeneid, I. 178, 179; Ovid's Met., VII.

[239] Inferno, x.x.xI. 92.

[240] Purgatorio, VI. 118, 119. Pulci, not understanding, has parodied this. ("Morgante," Canto II. st. 1.)

[241] See, for example, Purgatorio, XX. 100-117.

[242] We believe that Dante, though he did not understand Greek, knew something of Hebrew. He would have been likely to study it as the sacred language, and opportunities of profiting by the help of learned Jews could not have been wanting to him in his wanderings. In the above-cited pa.s.sage some of the best texts read _I s' appellava_, and others _Un s' appellava_. G.o.d was called I (the _Je_ in Jehovah) or _One_, and afterwards _El_,--the strong,--an epithet given to many G.o.ds. Whichever reading we adopt, the meaning and the inference from it are the same.

[243] Inferno, IV.

[244] Dante's "Limbo," of course, is the older "Limbus Patrum."

[245] De Monarchia, Lib. II. -- 8.

[246] Faith, Hope, and Charity. (Purgatorio, XXIX. 121.) Mr.

Longfellow has translated the last verse literally. The meaning is,

"More than a thousand years ere baptism was."

[247] In which the _celestial Athens_ is mentioned.

[248] Purgatorio, XXVII. 139-142.

[249] "I conceived myself to be now," says Milton, "not as mine own person, but as a member incorporate into that truth whereof I was persuaded."

[250]

"But now was turning my desire and will, Even as a wheel that equally is moved, The Love that moves the sun and other stars."

Paradiso, x.x.xIII., closing verses of the Divina Commedia.

[251] Dante seems to allude directly to this article of the Catholic faith when he says, on entering the Celestial Paradise, "to signify transhumanizing by words could not be done," and questions whether he was there in the renewed spirit only or in the flesh also:--

"If I was merely _what of me thou newly Createdst_, Love who governest the heavens, Thou knowest who didst lift me with thy light."

Paradiso, I. 70-75.

[252] Paradiso, II. 7. Lucretius makes the same boast:--

"Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante Trita solo."