Part 20

and before his spiritual court and coram patre he was made one with her; then from day to day he loved her more strongly.

She, deprived of her first husband, more than a thousand years and more, despised and dark, stood without invitation until this man;

nor did it avail to hear that she was found secure with Amiclatus, at the sound of his voice, he who struck fear into all the world;

nor did it avail to be constant or fierce, so that, where Mary remained below, she wept with Christ above upon the cross.

But that I may not proceed too obscurely, Francis and Poverty for these lovers take now in my diffuse discourse.

Their concord and their joyful looks, love and wonder and sweet gaze, made cause of holy thoughts;

so much that the venerable Bernard first unshod himself, and after such peace ran, and in running seemed to himself slow.

O unknown riches! O fertile good! unshod himself Giles, unshod himself Sylvester behind the bridegroom, so the bride pleased.

Then goes that father and that master with his lady and with that family that already bound the humble halter.

Nor did baseness of heart weigh upon his brow for being son of Peter Bernardone, nor for seeming despised to wonder;

but royally his firm intent he opened to Innocent, and from him received the first seal for his religion.

Then when the poor folk increased behind him, whose wondrous life would be better sung in the glory of heaven,

with a second crown adorned was by Honorius from the Eternal Spirit the holy will of this archimandrite.

And then, through thirst for martyrdom, before the proud Soldan he preached Christ and those who followed him,

and finding the people too harsh for conversion and not to stay in vain, returned to the fruit of the Italian grass,

in the harsh rock between Tiber and Arno from Christ he took the final seal, which his limbs bore for two years.

When to him who was allotted such good it pleased to draw him up to the reward that he merited in making himself little,

to his brothers, as to just heirs, he commended his dearest lady, and commanded that they love her in faith;

and from his bosom the illustrious soul willed to depart, returning to its kingdom, and would have no other bier than his body.

Think now what manner of man he was who, worthy, was colleague to maintain the bark of Peter on the high sea by right sign;

and this was our patriarch; wherefore whoever follows him, as he commands, may discern that he carries good merchandise.

But his flock, with new food, has become greedy, so that it cannot be but that through divers leaps it scatters;

and the more his sheep, remote and wandering, go from him, the more they return to the fold void of milk.

There are indeed some who fear the harm and cling to the shepherd; but they are so few that little cloth suffices for the habits.

Now, if my words are not faint, if your hearing has been attentive, if you recall to mind what has been said,

in part shall your will be content, for you shall see the plant from which it is lopped, and shall see the correction that argues

“Where one grows fat well, if one does not rave”.

Paradiso Canto XII

As soon as the last word the blessed flame took to speak, began to revolve the holy millstone;

and in its turning it had not wholly turned before another enclosed it in a circle, and motion with motion and song with song it caught;

a song that so surpasses our muses, our sirens in those sweet tubes, as first splendor that which it refutes.

As are drawn through tender cloud two parallel and like-colored arcs, when Juno bids her handmaid,

born of the inner one the outer, in the guise of the speech of that wanderer whom love consumed as the sun vapors,

and make the people presage here, by the pact that God with Noah placed, of the world that now never more is flooded:

so of those sempiternal roses turned about us the two garlands, and thus the outermost to the inmost answered.

Then when the dance and the other great feast, both of singing and of flaming light with light joyous and bland,

together at point and at will were quieted, even as the eyes that to the pleasure which moves them must together close and lift;

from the heart of one of the new lights moved a voice, that the needle to the star seemed to make me in turning to its where;

and began: “The love that makes me fair draws me to speak of the other duke for whom of my own so well is spoken.

Worthy is it that, where the one is, the other be brought: so that, as they warred together, their glory together shine.

The army of Christ, which so dear cost to re-arm, behind the ensign moved slow, suspicious and rare,

when the Emperor who ever reigns provided for the militia, that was in doubt, by grace alone, not for being worthy;

and, as is said, to his spouse gave succor with two champions, by whose deed, by whose word the strayed people gathered.

In that part where rises to open sweet Zephyr the new leaves wherewith is seen Europe reclothe,

not far from the beating of the waves behind which, through the long course, the sun sometimes from every man hides,

sits fortunate Calaroga under the protection of the great shield wherein the lion lies under and overcomes:

therein was born the amorous lover of the Christian faith, the holy athlete benign to his own and cruel to enemies;

and as soon as created, was so replete his mind with living virtue that, in his mother, he made her prophet.

Then when the espousals were accomplished at the sacred font between him and Faith, where they endowed each other with mutual salvation,

the lady who for him gave assent, saw in sleep the wondrous fruit that should issue from him and his heirs;

and that he should be such in constitution, thence moved a spirit to name him with the possessive of whom he was all.

Dominic was he called; and I speak of him as of the husbandman whom Christ chose for his garden to help him.

Well appeared messenger and familiar of Christ: for the first love that in him was manifest, was to the first counsel that Christ gave.

Oftentimes was found silent and wakeful on earth by his nurse, as if he said: ‘I am come for this’.

O his father truly Felix! O his mother truly Johanna, if, interpreted, it avails as is said!

Not for the world, for which now one toils after Ostiense and Taddeus, but for love of the true manna

in little time a great doctor he became; so that he set about to go round the vineyard which soon whitens, if the vintner is bad.

And to the see that was once benign more to poor just men, not through it, but through him who sits, who degenerates,

not to dispense two or three for six, not the fortune of the first vacant see, not decimas, quae sunt pauperum Dei,

he asked, but against the erring world license to combat for the seed whereof twenty-four plants make thee.

Then, with doctrine and will together, with the apostolic office he moved as a torrent that high vein presses;

and on the heretic stocks struck his impetuosity, more vividly there where the resistances were grosser.

Of him were made then divers rivulets wherewith the Catholic garden is watered, so that its shrubs stand more alive.

If such was the one wheel of the chariot wherein the Holy Church defended herself and won in the field her civil strife,

well should it be manifest to thee the excellence of the other, of whom Thomas before my coming was so courteous.

But the orbit that made the highest part of its circumference, is forsaken, so that where was grume is now mold.

His family, that moved straight with feet in his footsteps, is so turned, that it casts the front to the rear;

and soon shall be seen of the harvest of the evil cultivation, when the tare shall complain that the ark is taken from it.

Well say I, who should search leaf by leaf our volume, still would find page where he would read ‘I am that which I was wont’;

but it shall not be from Casale nor Acquasparta, whence come such to the writing, that one flees it and the other coerces it.

I am the life of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, who in the great offices always postponed the left care.

Illuminato and Augustine are these, who were of the first barefoot poor who in the halter made themselves friends of God.

Hugh of Saint Victor is here with them, and Peter the Eater and Peter the Spaniard, who below shines in twelve little books;

Nathan the prophet and the metropolitan Chrysostom and Anselm and that Donatus who to the first art deigned put hand.

Rabanus is here, and shines by my side the Calabrian abbot Joachim endowed with prophetic spirit.

To envy so great a paladin moved me the inflamed courtesy of brother Thomas and the discreet Latin;

and moved with me this company.”

Paradiso Canto XIII

Imagine, who well understand wishes that which I now saw—and retain the image, while I speak, as a firm rock—,

fifteen stars that in diverse regions quicken the heaven with so much serenity that it surpasses of the air every mass;

imagine that chariot to which the bosom suffices of our heaven both night and day, so that at the turning of the pole it fails not;

imagine the mouth of that horn that begins at the tip of the stalk around which the first wheel goes,

to have made of itself two signs in heaven, such as made the daughter of Minos when she felt the chill of death;

and the one in the other to have its rays, and both to turn in such a way that the one went to the first and the other to the after;

and thou shalt have almost the shadow of the true constellation and of the double dance that circled the point where I was:

since it is so far from our usage, as far from the moving of the Chiana moves the heaven that all others surpasses.

There was sung not Bacchus, not Paean, but three persons in divine nature, and in one person itself and the human.

Completed the singing and the turning its measure; and attended to us those holy lights, felicitating themselves from care to care.

Broke the silence in the concordant numina then the light in which the wondrous life of the poor man of God was narrated,

and said: “When one straw is threshed, when its seed is already laid away, sweet love invites me to thresh the other.

Thou believest that in the breast whence the rib was taken to form the fair cheek whose palate cost all the world,

and in him who, pierced by the lance, both before and after so satisfied, that of every guilt he wins the balance,

whatsoever to human nature is allowed to have of light, all was infused by that worth which made the one and the other;

and therefore thou lookest to that which I said above, when I narrated that the second had not the good that in the fifth light is enclosed.

Now open thine eyes to that which I answer thee, and thou shalt see thy belief and my saying in the truth become as center in round.

That which dies not and that which can die is naught but splendor of that idea which, loving, brings forth our Sire;

for that living light which so flows from its shining, that it is not disunited from him nor from the love that interweaves them,

through its goodness gathers its raying, as mirrored, in nine subsistences, eternally remaining one.

Thence descends to the ultimate powers down from act to act, so becoming, that it makes no more than brief contingencies;

and these contingencies I understand to be the generated things, which produces with seed and without seed the moving heaven.

The wax of these and who leads it stands not in one mode; and therefore under the ideal sign more and less shines through.

Whence it comes that one same wood, according to species, better and worse fruits; and ye are born with diverse genius.

If the wax were exactly deducted and the heaven were in its supreme virtue, the light of the seal would appear all;

but nature gives it always scant, likewise working to the artist who to the habit of art has a trembling hand.

Therefore if the warm love the clear vision of the first virtue disposes and marks, all the perfection is there acquired.

Thus was made once the earth worthy of all animal perfection; thus was made the Virgin pregnant;

so that I commend thy opinion, that human nature never was nor shall be such as in those two persons.

Now if I proceeded not further, ‘How then, was this one without peer?’ would begin thy words.

But that the not apparent may appear well, think who he was, and the cause that moved him, when it was said ‘Ask’, to demand.

I have not spoken so, that thou canst not well see that he was king, who asked wisdom so that he might be sufficient king;

not to know the number in which are the movers from here above, or if necessary with contingent ever necessary became;

not si est dare primum motum esse, or if of the half circle can be made a triangle that has not a right angle.

Whence, if that which I said and this note, royal prudence is that unequal seeing wherein the arrow of my intent strikes;

and if to the ‘arose’ thou direct clear eyes, thou shalt see to have respect only to kings, who are many, and the good are rare.

With this distinction take my saying; and thus it can stand with that which thou believest of the first father and of our Beloved.

And let this be ever lead to thy feet, to make thee move slow as a weary man both to the yes and no that thou seest not:

for he is among the fools well low, who without distinction affirms and denies in the one as in the other step;

for he encounters that oftentimes he bends the current opinion to false part, and then the affection binds the intellect.

Far more than in vain departs from shore, because he returns not such as he moves, who fishes for the true and has not the art.

And of this are open proofs in the world Parmenides, Melissus and Bryso and many, who went and knew not where;

so did Sabellius and Arius and those fools who were as swords to the Scriptures in rendering the straight faces crooked.

Let not the people, moreover, be too secure to judge, as he who esteems the crops in field before they are ripe;

for I have seen all the winter before the thorn show itself rigid and fierce, then bear the rose upon its top;

and wood I saw once straight and swift run the sea through all its course, perish at the end at entering the mouth.

Let not dame Bertha and ser Martino believe, through seeing one steal, another offer, to see them within the divine counsel;

for that may rise, and this may fall.”

Paradiso Canto XIV

From center to circle, and thus from circle to center moves the water in a round vase, according as it is struck without or within:

in my mind made sudden case this which I say, as soon as was silent the glorious life of Thomas,

by the similitude that was born of his speech and of that of Beatrice, to whom thus to begin, after him, pleased:

“To this one is needful, and tells you not nor with the voice nor thinking yet, of another truth to go to the root.

Tell him if the light wherewith is inflower’d your substance, shall remain with you eternally even as it is now;

and if it remains, tell how, since ye shall be visible remade, can it be that to the sight it harm you not.”

As, by more joy painted and drawn, at times those who go in wheel lift the voice and cheer the acts,

so, to the prayer prompt and devout, the holy circles showed new joy in the turning and in the wondrous note.

Whoso laments because here one dies to live up there, saw not here the refreshment of the eternal rain.

That One and Two and Three that ever lives and reigns ever in three and in two and in one, not circumscribed, and all circumscribes,

three times was sung by each of those spirits with such melody, that for every merit would be just meed.

And I heard in the brightest light of the lesser circle a modest voice, perhaps such as was from the angel to Mary,

answer: “As long as shall be the feast of paradise, so long our love shall ray around us such vesture.

Its brightness follows the ardor; the ardor the vision, and that is so much, as it has of grace above its worth.

As the glorious and holy flesh shall be reclothed, our person more grateful shall be for being all;

whereby shall increase that which gives us of gratuitous light the supreme good, light that to see him conditions us;

whence the vision must increase, increase the ardor that from that is kindled, increase the ray that from it comes.

But as coal that flame renders, and by living candor that surpasses, so that its appearance defends itself;

so this fulgor that now encircles us shall be vanquished in appearance by the flesh that all day the earth covers;

nor can so much light fatigue us: for the organs of the body shall be strong to all that can delight us.”

So sudden and aware appeared to me both the one and the other choir to say “Amen!”, that well they showed desire of the dead bodies:

perhaps not only for them, but for the mothers, for the fathers and for the others who were dear before they were sempiternal flames.

And behold around, of equal clarity, arise a lustre above that which was there, as horizon that brightens.

And as at the rising of first evening begin through the heaven new appearances, so that the sight seems and seems not true,

appeared to me there new subsistences begin to be seen, and make a wheel outside the other two circumferences.

O true sparkling of the Holy Spirit! how it became sudden and candent to my eyes that, vanquished, endured it not!

But Beatrice so fair and smiling showed herself to me, that among those sights must be left that the mind followed not.

Then my eyes resumed virtue to lift themselves; and I saw myself translated alone with my lady in higher health.

Well I perceived that I was more raised, by the inflamed smile of the star, that appeared to me redder than wont.

With all the heart and with that speech which is one in all, to God I made holocaust, such as befitted the new grace.

And not yet from my breast was exhausted the ardor of the sacrifice, when I knew that offering to be accepted and auspicious;

for with so much shine and so much red appeared to me splendors within two rays, that I said: “O Helios that so adornest them!”.

As distinguished from lesser and greater lights whitens between the poles of the world the Galaxy, so that it makes doubt even the wise;

so constellated made in the depth of Mars those rays the venerable sign that make joints of quadrants in round.

Here my memory conquers my wit; for that cross flashed Christ, so that I know not find worthy example;

but who takes his cross and follows Christ, shall excuse me of that which I leave, seeing in that dawn flash Christ.

From horn to horn and between the top and the base moved lights, sparkling strongly in the joining together and in the passing:

thus are seen here straight and bent, swift and slow, renewing sight, the minute bodies, long and short,

move through the ray wherewith is striped sometimes the shadow that, for its defense, the people with engine and art acquires.

And as viol and harp, in tense temper of many strings, make sweet tinkling to him from whom the note is not understood,

so from the lights that there appear to me was gathered through the cross a melody that ravished me, without understanding the hymn.

Well I perceived that it was of high praise, for to me came “Rise” and “Conquer” as to him who understands not and hears.

I fell so in love thence, that until then was no thing that bound me with so sweet bonds.

Perhaps my word appears too bold, postponing the pleasure of the fair eyes, in which mirroring my desire has rest;

but who notes that the living seals of every beauty do more the higher up, and that I had not there turned to those,

can excuse me of that which I accuse myself, to excuse me, and see me speak true: for the holy pleasure is not here disclosed,

because it makes itself, mounting, more sincere.

Paradiso Canto XV

Benign will wherein is liquefied always the love that rightly breathes, as cupidity does in the iniquitous,

silence placed on that sweet lyre, and made quiet the holy strings that the right hand of heaven slackens and draws.

How should be deaf to just prayers those substances, which, to give me will that I should pray them, were concordant to silence?

Well is it that without end complains who, for love of a thing that endures not eternally, that love strips himself.

As through the serene tranquil and pure darts at times sudden fire, moving the eyes that stood secure,

and seems a star that changes place, save that from the part where it is kindled nothing is lost, and it lasts little:

such from the horn that on the right extends to foot of that cross ran a star of the constellation that there shines;

nor parted the gem from its band, but through the radial stripe it ran, that appeared fire behind alabaster.

So pious the shade of Anchises offered, if our greater muse merits faith, when in Elysium he was aware of his son.

“O my blood, O superinfused grace of God, as to thee to whom twice ever were heaven’s gates reopened?”.

So that light: wherefore I attended to him; then turned to my lady the face, and hence and hence was stupefied;

for within her eyes burned a smile such, that I thought with mine to touch the bottom of my glory and of my paradise.

Then, to hear and to see joyful, the spirit joined to its beginning things, which I understood not, so deeply it spoke;

nor through election was it hidden from me, but through necessity, for its concept rose above the mark of mortals.

And when the bow of the ardent affection was so exhaled, that the speech descended toward the mark of our intellect,

the first thing that through me was understood, “Blessed be thou”, was, “trine and one, who in my seed art so courteous!”.

And followed: “Grateful and remote fast, drawn reading of the great volume wherein is never changed white nor brown,

solved hast thou, son, within this light wherein I speak to thee, by mercy of her who clad thee with plumes for the high flight.

Thou believest that to me thy thought comes from that which is first, even as ray from the one, if known, the five and six;

and therefore that I am and why I appear more joyous to thee, thou askest me not, than any other in this gay crowd.

Thou believest the true; for the lesser and the great of this life gaze in the mirror wherein, before thou think, the thought unfolds;

but because the sacred love wherein I watch with perpetual sight and which makes me thirsty with sweet desiring, be better fulfilled,

thy voice secure, bold and glad sound the will, sound the desire, to which my answer is already decreed!”.

I turned to Beatrice, and she heard before I spoke, and smiled me a sign that made grow the wings to my will.

Then began I thus: “The affection and the wit, as the first equality appeared to you, of one weight for each of you became,

for the sun that lit you and burned you, with heat and with light is so equal, that all similitudes are scant.

But will and argument in mortals, for the cause that to you is manifest, diversely are feathered in wings;

whence I, who am mortal, feel in this unequality, and therefore not thank but with the heart the paternal feast.

Well I supplicate thee, living topaz that this precious joy dost engem, that thou make me of thy name sated”.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”