1. The most suggestive discussion so far is Freccero 1972 (also in 1986 119-135). Sturm-Maddox (1987) recognizes the place of the petrose in the text of the Purgatorio; although the recognition is welcome, her reading of "Io son venuto" as strictly fatalistic is erroneous. [BACK]

2. See Dante 1946 149-50; Blasucci 1957; Marti 1960 525-530; and Jacomuzzi 1972 18. Toja (1973 735) makes a case for associating passages of intense transumptio (e.g., Purgatorio 6.76-151) with the tradition of trobar clus (but see also Blasucci 1979 28-29), thus indirectly with the petrose. [BACK]

3. For the "brau lengage" of Pier delle Vigne, see Spitzer 1942 92-93. The tenzone of Sinon and Maestro Adamo is often linked to Dante's tenzone with Forese, a category of "realism" closely linked to the petrose; see Dante 1946 20-21; Contini 1970a 170; and Marti 1960 526-527. Cantos 5, 6, 7, 12, 24, and continue

      25 show important connections with the petrose as well; see our discussions, pp. 202, 212-217, and 223. [BACK]

4. Blasucci (1969 5-6) minimizes the importance of the scientific dimensions of the petrose in favor of the category of "energy": "Ma di gran lunga più imponente [than the astronomical and elemental aspects], come s'è detto, è lo sviluppo nel poema di quel linguaggio carico d'energia, che costituisce la risorsa stilistica più feconda delle petrose." [BACK]

5. Russo 1971 103-158; for the features noted in the text, see esp. pp. 144-156. [BACK]

6. For terms relating to gems in Dante's Paradiso, see Appendix 3. [BACK]

7. Dragonetti (1968 275-418) argues that the distribution of gems in the Paradiso is systematic, a hierarchy of attributes derived largely from the Etymologiarum liber of Isidore. For the gems of the Paradiso, see Appendix 3. [BACK]

8. In Albert's De animalibus (1916-21 1081), the seminal and formative virtù of the spheres is compared to the art of the sculptor Policleitus, to whom Dante alludes in Purgatorio 10.32. The allusion illustrates Albert's discussion of the spheres as the tools, the chisels or hammers, of the intelligences who are the craftsmen; Dante refers, in the heaven of Gemini, to the hammers and anvils of Nature (24.102). See Chapter 2, note 75. [BACK]

9. For this passage, see below, note 31. [BACK]

10. The cycle of evaporation and rainfall, one of the solar cycles described in Purgatorio 5, is linked to the cycle of water in "Amor, tu vedi ben"; see Convivio 4.18.4 and Quaglio's notes in Dante 1964 1: 386. For Paradiso 28 as an echo of "Io son venuto," see Comens 1986 167. [BACK]

11. See below, pp. 212-217, for our discussion of Inferno 24-25. [BACK]

12. The relation to poetry and poets is in the allusive register as well. As we know, Dante draws on two of his Latin exemplars, Lucan and Statius, for the bird similes in the Purgatorio. He draws on Lucan as well for his account of the serpents in Inferno 24-25—the same passages consulted for the accounts of the wind in "Io son venuto," as noted by Contini (Dante 1946 14). Dante's bird similes have been much discussed: see, e.g., Shoaf 1975; and Ryan 1976. On the poets in the Purgatorio specifically, see, e.g., Abrams 1976, 1985; Folena 1977; Moleta 1979-80; Martinez 1983; and Barolini 1984. [BACK]

13. A recent reading along these lines is Abrams 1985. [BACK]

14. In both cases, triegue rhymes with segue; triegua appears but three times in the Commedia. [BACK]

15. For virtù in the Purgatorio, see 16.59; 17.54, 73; 17.104: "amor sementa in voi d'ogni virtute"; 18.51: "specifica virtù ha in sè colletta"; 18.62, 73 (seven uses). Cf. also 16.114: "ogn'erba si conosce per lo seme"; abete at 22.133; lauro at 22.108; verdura at 23.69; and erba, acerba at 11.115, 117. [BACK]

16. No other lyrics of Dante adopt both these features. Dante's canzoni in the Convivio "Voi ch'intendendo" and "Amor che ne la mente" both draw on astronomical concepts, but neither has a seasonal beginning that includes telling time by the planets and stars; Sonnet 1 of the Vita Nuova ("Erano quasi atterzate l'ore") is unspecific except with reference to the time of night. For a recent history of the spring beginning in lyric poems of the Latin West and in continue

      European vernacular poetry, see Wilhelm 1964. A poem sometimes attributed to Arnaut, "Entre'l taur e'l doble signe," has a fully astronomical incipit; see Daniel 1981 78-81. [BACK]

17. For a suggestive (if minority) view on the meaning of these three passages taken together, see Pecoraro 1987 231-238. The dating of the poem remains a topic of debate, but opinion in favor of April 8, 1300, as the date of the pilgrim's entrance to Hell is now preponderant; see Moore 1895 145-176; and Boyde 1981 163-165. For the creation of the world in the spring, with the sun in Aries, see Moore 1903 61, 64, 73, 54- n , 170 n . [BACK]

18. Just before, at 1.17-18, Dante had mentioned the sun as the "pianeta / che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle." Dante's concern with the astronomical resonance of his lines may be gauged by the fact that the first mention of the sun in the poem, at verse 17, balances the third mention of it, at verse 60; the fulcrum is verse 38, cited in the text (if we count lines, 1.17 is twenty-one lines from 1.38, and 1.38 twenty-two lines from 1.60. If we count tercets, the symmetry is exact). For other echoes of the petrose in the first two cantos of the Inferno, see below, pp. 204-207. [BACK]

19. For the parallels, see Baldelli 1978b 69; Mazzotta 1979 44. [BACK]

20. The other principal influence is, of course, the Vita nuova, in which events in the text are correlated with celestial motions and recoverable dates (such as that of Beatrice's death, June 8, 1290). For reconstructions of Dante's and Beatrice's horoscopes in the Vita nuova, see Pecoraro 1987 345-363, 440. [BACK]

21. Dante's reference to the spring in Purgatorio 32.53-54 periphrastically names the sun in Aries ("la gran luce mischiata con quella / che raggia dietro alla celeste lasca"); gran luce is plausibly an antiphrase of poco giorno and gran cerchio d'ombra. For Aries, see also Paradiso 1.40, 28.117, and 29.2 (discussed below, pp. 210-211). [BACK]

22. For Leo as ruler of Italy, mentioned by Ptolemy, see Rabuse 1972 22. [BACK]

23. Jacomuzzi (1972 18) observes that the very first lines of the Commedia echo the petrose. Relevant text is: Nel mezzo del cammin . . . / mi ritrovai ( Inferno 1.1-2); dura / . . . aspra e forte (1.4-5); punto (1.11; rhyming with giunto, 1.13). Cf., from the first two petrose, the identification of a specific point on the arc of life ("Io son venuto al punto della rota") and the insertion of the speaker in relation to it ( mi ritrovai; son venuto; son giunto ); the threatening darkness of the negative point ( quel punto ); the speaker's response ("lasso" in "Al poco giorno"; ahi in the Commedia ). Dura, selvaggia, and aspra recall the diction of the petrose. A striking detail is how the rhyme on giunto/punto in the Commedia (which then closes out with a rime riche—compunto —in the style of the "equivocating" petrose ) draws the link between giunto and punto (not in rhyme) in the early verses of "Io son venuto" and "Al poco giorno."

      The descent to Hell in Canto 2 of the Inferno also shares situation, diction, rhyme, and syntax with "Al poco giorno" and especially "Io son venuto." Notable are the evening scene; the appeal to the contrast of other animals and the poet ("e io sol uno," 2.3); and the speaker's resolution ("a sostener la guerra / . . . del cammino," 2.4-5). Compare, in "Io son venuto": the adver- soft

      sative e  . . . in each sirma distinguishing the lover from the rest of nature, and the lover's insistence on going the course ("e io da la mia guerra / non son però tornato," 62-63), expressed with the same rhyme ( -erra ) used in Inferno 2. The same sources—the insomnia of Dido in Aeneid 4 and of Aeneas in 8—are alluded to in "Io son venuto" and at the beginning of Inferno 2. [BACK]

24. The horoscope of Florence comes into play in the canto of Pier delle Vigne ( Inferno 13), where the presence of Mars in the city's natal horoscope is said to account for its recurrent strife. See Rabuse 1957 11-77; and Schnapp 1987 37-38. [BACK]

25. See Monarchia 1.11.5, where justice "est enim tunc Phebe similis, fratrem dyametraliter intuenti de purpureo matutino serenitatis." [BACK]

26. Dante 1973 2:26. The same principles apply to the first verses of Purgatorio 15, 25, and 27. [BACK]

27. For Dante's insistence, in a polemical context, on the differences between sun and moon, see Monarchia 3.4. [BACK]

28. For a similar textual strategy on Dante's part, see Paradiso 13.55-57 and Sapegno's note in Dante 1957b, 952. [BACK]

29. There are additional references, throughout the cantica, both to the horizon itself (e.g., 3.70, the midpoint of that canto) and to effects of the horizon: dawn and dusk, or determinations of time according to it (e.g., 3.25-26, 4.139). [BACK]

30. Singleton (1965a) shows that the seven central cantos of the Purgatorio form a symmetrical fan, at the core of which are two mentions of free will, also symmetrically placed, by Marco Lombardo (16.73) and by Virgil (18.73). Singleton claims that the symmetry at the center is the poet's mark, or seal, on his work. It is thus appropriate that the original separation of light from darkness should be echoed at the center of the poem: the poet forms his text by dividing it. By the same criterion, the central division of night and day is framed by references, twenty-five tercets away, to the influence of the planets: 16.73: "lo cielo i vostri movimenti inizia"; 18.70-71: "poniam che di necessitate / surga ogni amor." Close by (16.106-10, 18.76-80) there are references to the sun and moon. [BACK]

31. The previous evening in Purgatory, when the pilgrim had met Sordello, also includes a subtle weave of references to the petrose, beginning in Canto 7 and continuing through the beginning of Canto 9: for example, the phrasing of "mentre che l'orizzonte il dì tien chiuso" (7.60) rephrases "Io son venuto," 19: "[lo vento] questo emisperio chiude tutto e salda." Verse 7.85 ("prima che'l poco sole omai s'annidi") echoes the birth of Gemini from the horizon in the canzone ("l'orizzonte, quando il sol si corca, / ci partorisce il geminato cielo"), with the pairing poco sole echoing poco giorno in the sestina. The depiction of the stars in the constellation Scorpio arrayed like gems on the forehead of dawn at the beginning of Canto 9 is very much in the style of the petrose. Such parallels might appear generic, but they gain in force when we note the exact verbal echoes of the language of "Io son venuto" in these cantos: thus the rhymes at 8.100-103 ( alto/assalto/smalto ) reproduce the rhymes of the canzone (55, 57-58), though in a different order. Subsequently, at 8.131, 133, 135, torca/sol non si ricorca/inforca repeat the rhymes in verses 2 and 5 of the canzone ( sol si corca / inforca ), while at continue

      9.13-15 guai / lai / inchinai evoke guai / gai in verses 32 and 33 of the canzone. Remarkable about this pattern is the fact that the triple repetition of the rhyme -alto (which Dante uses also in Inferno 9) from "Io son venuto" is at the exact center of a section of 139 lines (that is, of canto length) that begins at 8.42, with the pilgrim gelato at the thought of the appearance of the serpent, and concludes at 9.42, with the pilgrim again feeling the cold: aghiaccia. [BACK]

32. Inferno 24.66. Strictly speaking, the word is one of the yrsuta ornativa by reason of excessive length, prolixitatis ( De vulgari eloquentia 2.vii.6). [BACK]

33. That this passage is related to the petrose is well known; see Dante 1957a 263; and Baker 1974. The simile is linked to three other passages in the Commedia that employ the imagery of melting, or "unwintering": Purgatorio 30.85-99; and Paradiso 2.106-108 (discussed below, pp. 225-226) and 33.64-66. For the relation of Purgatorio 30.85-99 to the petrose, see Blasucci 1969 25-27; and SturmMaddox 1987 130. The passage requires more extensive analysis, however, for it is less a palinodic qualification of the petrose than their incorporation in a new context; the imagery and techniques of "Io son venuto" are much in evidence. In the passage, the snow frozen in the "living beams" ( vive travi ) of the evergreens in the mountains on the spine of Italy, subsequently thawed by the south winds blowing from the tropics, is compared to the tears and sighs of the pilgrim produced by the song of the angels. The operation of cold in both the earth and the pilgrim is described in terms by now familiar to us from our study of the petrose: the snow in the mountains is constrained ( stretta ) by the Slavonian or north winds as the ice contracts around the pilgrim's heart ("il gel che m'era intorno al cor ristretto" ). The living beams, the back ( dosso ) of the mountains, and the breath ( spiri ) of the wind are terms that mediate the animate and the inanimate, the world and the body. The "land that loses shade" in the passage is of course a direct reference to, and a meteorological inversion of, the wind from Ethiopa of "Io son venuto":

      Levasi de la rena d'Etiopia 
lo vento peregrin che l'aere turba, 
per la spera del sol ch'ora la scalda; 
   e passa il mare, onde conduce copia 
di nebbia tal che, s'altro non la sturba, 
questo emisperio chiude tutto e salda; 
      e poi si solve, e cade in bianca falda 
di fredda neve ed in noiosa pioggia, 
onde l'aere s'attrista tutto e piagne.

      The passages are complementary (the common source in Lucan's Pharsalia 9.528-531 is pointed out by Contini in Dante 1946 153). In the canzone, the sun, having passed to the south of the equator, heats the air and raises winds that bring warm moist air to Italy to feed winter snows; but in the Purgatorio, the land that loses shade yields the warm breezes that melt the snow. In the first case, snow is produced by the release of water; in the second, snow melts into flowing water. The parallel between macro- and microcosm is elaborated with great complexity in the formal frame of the five tercets. The vehicle of the simile continue

      occupying the first two tercets relates the freezing and the melting of the snow. The tenor begins with the third tercet ("così fui . . .") and reiterates the moments of freezing and melting: freezing appears in the third and fifth, melting in the fourth and fifth tercets. Each term of the simile includes a subsimile: in the vehicle, the melting of snow is compared to a flame melting its way through a candle; in the tenor, the real effect of the angel's song is compared to imagined results of a verbal intercession (Dante 1957b 742). The entire passage is thus an application of the natural landscape deployed in "Io son venuto" to the pilgrim on the summit of the mountain of Purgatory (see above, pp. 197-198). ( Dante Studies 102 [1984, published in 1988] appeared too late to be taken into account here.) [BACK]

34. Baker (1974 78-79) notes the focus on time, but for him the prevailing mood is one of stagnation and paralysis. [BACK]

35. See Virgil's "si parva licet componere magnis," Georgics 4.176. The association of the passage with pastoral is of long standing; see Dante 1957b 262-263; Dante 1970 409. [BACK]

36. References to spring in the petrose use dolce: "il dolce tempo che riscalda i colli" ("Al poco giorno," 10); "dolce tempo novello" ("Io son venuto," 67). [BACK]

37. Sorella bianca in the simile (25.4) recalls the "bianca falda / di fredda neve" ("Io son venuto," 10-II); biancheggiar (25.9) echoes "bianchir de' colli" ("Al poco giorno," 2) and "tornar di bianco in verde" ("Al poco giorno," 11). The brina as an effect of winter recalls "Io son venuto," 47-48: "li fioretti . . . / li quai non poten tollerar la brina." [BACK]

38. In addition, the shepherd's va-et-vient ( ritorna, riede ) contrasts with the speaker's "non son però tornato un passo a retro, / né vo' tonar" in "Io son venuto" (63-64), his fixed determination to ride out temporal cycles. [BACK]

39. The petrose, according to Baker (1974 80), show an "earlier, inferior aesthetic . . . marked by egocentrism, preciosity, art for its own sake." [BACK]

40. Hawkins 1980; Chiampi (1981 81-89) also discusses the melting hoarfrost as an image of deformatio in relation to both pilgrim and poet. [BACK]

41. For an earlier statement of this view, see Terdiman 1973. [BACK]

42. The anticipation of the mountain of Purgatory anticipates Ulisse's glimpse of the mountain in the next bolgia, 26.132-135. [BACK]

43. Purgatorio 3.79-87 and 27.76-87 are similes of pastoral inspiration; Matelda's identification is at 28.139-44, poco tempo silvano at 32.100. For Eden and the Golden Age in the Commedia, see Mazzotta 1979 122-124, 221-225. [BACK]

44. Hawkins 1980 5; and Chiampi 1981 84. [BACK]

45. Baker (1974 84) cites Rabanus's gloss on frost as malitia perversorum. To be sure, Dante's canto of the thieves is rich in references to the act of writing and to its ephemerality; but as we hope to show elsewhere, this is part of a systematic investigation in Cantos 24-25 of the effects of time—the archthief—on all human works. The point of Dante's self-administered lesson is not the banal one that his own works are also ephemeral, but that the poet must, because embedded in time, inevitably rewrite the Word in his own unstable words. This sense of a genealogy of poets, parallel to the parody in the canto of human sexual genealogy, underlies the concern in the canto on the rivalry of Lucan and Ovid continue

      and accounts for Dante's paragone with the ancient poets. Dante must be a "thief" to repair the damage of time. [BACK]

46. What the author of the Vita nuova finds in the book of his memory is, of course, the rubric "Incipit vita nova," a beginning. For the tabula rasa as an image of mind, see Aquinas 1959 171. [BACK]

47. Although the apparent meaning here is that the sun's rays are cooled by Aquarius (the sun is not very hot in February), the idea of the sun's rays acquiring strength is compatible. [BACK]

48. See esp. Adam's comparison of languages to foliage in Paradiso 26.132; and below, note 159. For the sun's production of new foliage ( novelle fronde ), see Paradiso 12.46-51. [BACK]

49. Demonstrated by Baker (1974 82-83), who gives citations from Ristoro d'Arezzo's Composizione del mondo, showing that the impoverished villanello typifies the inhabitants of a Saturnine world. [BACK]

50. See Chapter 3, p. 115 and note 57. [BACK]

51. See Ptolemy 1940 79-81; and Macrobius 1970a 89 ("superius enim diximus in Capricorno Saturnum post omnes fuisse. ergo secunda adiectio eum primum fecit qui ultimus fuerat, ideo Aquarius qui Capricornum sequitur, Saturno datur"). [BACK]

52. The verb schiarire will return in rhyme in the heaven of Gemini, where it describes John the Evangelist as a sun ( schiarì, Paradiso 25.100). See below, pp. 252-253. [BACK]

53. Chiampi (1981 87) notes the relation between the similes at 24.1-21 and 26.25-33. Cassell (1984 83-84, 160) reads the details of the simile in Canto 26 as a moralization on the punishment meted the false counsellors. There is no contradiction: what is, in Nature, a scene of benign repose may also be, in the writing of the contrapasso, a sign of condemnation. [BACK]

54. For the significance of Saturn in Leo and the Golden Age, see Rabuse 1976 272-274 and 1978 19-21; also 1978 28-29, where he cites Isidore's justification ( De natura rerum liber 13.1) of the cold of Saturn as necessary for tempering the great heat of the heavens generally. [BACK]

55. Macrobius 1970a 91-92 (1.22.1-8). Macrobius's language ("demersum est stringente perpetuo gelu") sounds like an account of the production of crystal. [BACK]

56. See Chapter 2, pp. 82-84. [BACK]

57. "Io son venuto," 10-12 ("E però non disgombra / un sol penser d'amore, ond'io son carco / la mente mia"), is echoed in Cocito by Camiscion de' Pazzi's reference to Sassol Mascheroni: "questi che m'ingombra / col capo sì, ch'i' non veggio oltre più" (32.63-64). [BACK]

58. The repetition of freddo and freddura in Cocito, although the terms are never in rhyme, is a form of repercussio like that of the dominant rhyme-words in "Amor, tu vedi ben." [BACK]

59. In "Così nel mio parlar," only the rhyming word rezzo (57; Inferno 32.73) connotes cold. But the rhyme with z, prominent in Cocito (see Inferno 32.68-75, on -azzi, -ezzo ) and identified as particularly harsh ("z . . . lictera non sine multa rigiditate profertur," De vulgari eloquentia I.xiii.5), imports the rigor of cold into the motives for linguistic harshness in the canzone. See, in "Così," -ezzi continue

      (14-18), -orza (25-26), -alza (49-50), -ezzo (53, 57), -erza (67, 68, 71, 72); and, not in rhyme: merzé, bellezza, durezza, guizzo, spezzan. [BACK]

60. Dante draws on the commonplace of meter as a kind of enclosure or constriction of words within a boundary; see, for example, Latini 1948 3.10: "mais li sentiers de risme est plus estrois et plus fors, si comme celui ki est clos et fermés de murs et de palis." [BACK]

61. See Benvenuto da Imola 1887 2:533: "potuit [Amphion] mirabili eloquentia sua cumulare et aggregare lapidem lapidi, et saxum saxo ad constructionem moeniorum thebanorum, et ego potero coniungere rithimum rithimo ad descriptionem istius pessimae civitatis." [BACK]

62. See especially the insistence on the forms of convenire: converrebbe ( Inferno 32.2); convegno (32.135); "conviene ancor ch'altrui si chiuda" (33.24); "mi convegna" (33.117). For these forms and their meaning, see Shoaf 1988. Boitani (1981 85-86) notes that the poet's request for decorum (32.12) is echoed by Chaucer's recommendation that words be "cosyns to the dede." The source for both poets is Timaeus 29b. Boethius translates ( Consolatio 3.pr. 12): "Platone sanciente didiceris cognatos de quibus loquuntur rebus oportere esse sermones." In Caina, where treachery involves kinsmen, the principle is ironically applied. [BACK]

64. Not that the poet presents the pilgrim's response as other than extreme: it is itself an instance of the mimesis of the desperate conditions at the center of the cosmos. [BACK]

65. See Durling 1975, 1981a, 1981b. [BACK]

66. Boccaccio understood Limbo as corresponding to a place in the brain, and clearly understood this entire dimension of the Inferno; see his note on Limbo, where he cites Bernard Silvester's De universitate mundi (Boccaccio 1965 134-136). [BACK]

67. Singleton 1966. [BACK]

68. De Genesi ad litteram 11.24.31-25.32 ( PL 34.457-458); cf. Enarrationes in Psalmos 139.7 (in verses 5 and 6), 13 (in 10). [BACK]

69. On the heaven of the moon, see Proto 1912; Nardi 1967a; Miller 1977; and Pastore Stocchi 1981—whose attempt at a transhistorical "Galilean" reading we find overstated (see esp. pp. 170-171). [BACK]

70. "Quasi adamante che lo sol ferisse" ( Paradiso 2.33). Benvenuto da Imola (1887 4: 343) recalls that adamant is "parum cristallo obscurior." See also Marbod ( PL 171.1739): "De crystallorum natum sumptumque metallis / Hunc ita fulgentem crystallina reddit origo"); and Albertus Magnus (1967 70): "a little darker coloured than rock crystal." [BACK]

71. See also Purgatorio 19.2-3, where the two cold planets are paired: "il freddo della luna / . . . e talor da Saturno." continue [BACK]

72. Dante's downward gaze in Paradiso 22 includes mention of the "problem" that occupies Beatrice in Canto 2: "Vidi la figlia di Latona incensa / sanza quell'ombra che mi fu cagione / per che già la credei e rara e densa" (22.139-141). [BACK]

73. The enigmatic verses referring to "la figlia del sole" ( Paradiso 27.136-138) have been assigned to the moon, with fresh arguments, by Pierotti 1981. Pierotti (p. 217) cites Bonaventure's Collationes in Hexaemeron 22.2, in which the filia solis, the sponsa of Canticle 6.9, is identified with both the Church and the Moon: "sicut luna est filia solis et recepit lumen ab eo, similiter militans Ecclesia a superna Ierusalem; unde Apostolus dicit eam matrem nostram, quia est mater influentiarum, quibus efficimur filii Dei." [BACK]

74. Zahlten 1969 174 quotes the Imago mundi of Honorius of Autun, PL 172.138b: "Huius corpus est globosum, natura igneum, sed acqua permistum." [BACK]

75. Aquinas, Summa theologica 1a, quaest. 68.art.4c; cited in Litt 1963 312. [BACK]

76. Corpo appears in "Amor, tu vedi ben," as corpo freddo, to describe the water of tears; it is repeated in Paradiso 2 at verses 37 and 39 (twice) to describe the body of the pilgrim and that of the sphere. [BACK]

77. For this explanation, widely disseminated, see Marbod ( PL 171.1766). Benvenuto (1887 4:344) has: "ostrea . . . concipiunt de rore coeli." [BACK]

78. Dante's language reflects the biblical description of the heavens as the waters above; as Nardi showed (1944 307-13), Dante's reference to quest'acque in Paradiso 29.21 is to the Holy Spirit brooding over the waters above (see also 2.7: "l'acque ch'io prendo già mai non si corse"). The passage echoes, moreover, the imagery of Christian lyric in describing Mary's conception by the Holy Spirit—surely the ultimate example of how light informs matter, a re-evocation of the original fiat lux of Creation. See Adam of St. Victor "In natale sequentia" 16-18 (Spitzmuller 1971 638): "Nec crystallus rumpitur / nec in partu solvitur / pudoris signaculum"; and the anonymous sequence cited by Cosmo, quoted in Dante 1979b 3:33:

sicut vitrum radio 
solis penetratur 
inde tamen lesio 
nulla vitro datur 
sic immo subtilius 
matre non corrupta, 
Deus Dei filius 
sua prodit nupta. [BACK]

79. "E indi l'altrui raggio si rifonde / così come color torna per vetro / lo qual di retro a sé piombo nasconde." [BACK]

80. See Chapter 4, pp. 152-155; and, for the mirror imagery in "Io son venuto," Chapter 2, pp. 104-105. Dante describes the eye as a leaded mirror in Convivio 3.9.8. [BACK]

81. Baldelli 1978a identifies such repetition as typical of the petrose. [BACK]

82. The moon as mirror was of course commonplace: see Zahlten 1969 175; and Macrobius 1970a 75 ("luna speculi instar"). [BACK]

83. See pp. 208-209. [BACK]

84. Miller (1977 263-266) suggests that the homely experiment also fore- soft

      shadows the pilgrim's final direct vision of the hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ at the very end of the poem, as well as the recurrence in the Paradiso of mirror imagery (p. 269); thus, the passage is microcosmic of the poem as well as of its putative object, the heavens (p. 276); the grammatical and logical orders are homologous with the cosmological. For other mirror imagery in the Paradiso that is cosmological, see 21.16-18, 28.4-15. [BACK]

85. For this text, see Introduction, pp. 9-11. [BACK]

86. For this analogy in Albertus Magnus, see Introduction, pp. 41-44, and Chapter 4, pp. 161-162. [BACK]

87. Cf. Aquinas 1959 63: "Sed sicut oculus est pupilla et visus, et ibi anima et corpus, animal." For the problem implicit in Dante's analogy of the intelligences joined to the spheres like the soul joined in the body, see our remarks in Chapter 2, notes 67 and 75, and Introduction, note 87. [BACK]

88. In "Donne ch'avete" the descent was precisely from soul to body; see Chapter 1, pp. 63-64. [BACK]

89. Cf. Timaeus 47a-c; cited above, p. 11. [BACK]

90. The words at the center of Beatrice's two speeches are caldo, neve, colore, freddo, luce, and aspetto. [BACK]

91. The several mirrors to which Miller (1977) refers—the speculum inferius of creatures and the speculum superius of the divine mind—are thus implicit in the ascent performed by Beatrice. See esp. Miller 1977 269: "The ascending mirrors of knowledge imply the descending mirrors of being [in Alain's Anticlaudianus ]." [BACK]

92. In his clarification of the moonspots, Nardi (1967c 5) observes that the question of diverse virtues which Dante raises applies to all the celestial spheres: "E questo fa sì che il problema delle macchie lunari accenni già ad implicare tutta la cosmologia dantesca." [BACK]

93. See Nardi 1967 23-25, where the increasing determination of influence in each successive lower sphere is explained; the moon, the lowest planet, is logically subject to the formal virtues in the superior spheres. The variation of the moon's surface reflects the variation of all the spheres, which are partially diaphanous and partially lucent: "Tertium [the third heaven, subdivided into stars and planets] partim diaphanum et partim lucidum actu, quod vocant caelum sidereum" (Aquinas, Summa theologica 1a, quaest. 63, art. 4c; cited in Litt 1963 312). [BACK]

94. "Infra lunam et aer et natura permutationis pariter incipiunt, et sicut aetheris et aeris, ita divinorum et caducorum luna confinium est" (Macrobius 1970a 75, 90). [BACK]

95. In Inferno 10.80 it is, in Farinata's words, "la faccia della donna che qui [in Hell] regge." [BACK]

96. Macrobius 1970a 58 (1.14.15). [BACK]

97. Nardi 1967c 30-31; and Tateo 1970 656. See also Miller 1977 275-278. [BACK]

98. Thus in 5.94 ( sì lieta ). See also 8.15; 14.79; 18.56 ( luci . . . gioconde ); 21.23; 23.59-60, 70; and 25.116. [BACK]

99. Beatrice's eyes thus correspond, toute proportion gardée, to the nearly all-seeing deuspierres de cristal in Narcissus's fountain in Guillaume de Lorris's part continue

      of the Roman de la rose (1537-70); see our discussion, Chapter 4, p. 153 and note 35. In addition to the almost all-seeing eye crystals, Pézard (Dante 1965 1377-78) points to the discussion of moonspots in the Roman (16,833-80), although the explanation there given is that rejected by Dante. That Dante consulted the Rose in composing both "Amor, tu vedi ben" and Canto 2 of the Paradiso is therefore highly probable. For discussion, see Nardi 1967c 8; and Dante 1979b 3:35. [BACK]

100. See Figure 7 (page 154) for references to the sun in "Amor, tu vedi ben." [BACK]

101. Freccero 1986 221-244, is an indispensable account of the opening verses of Canto 10 and their implications for the heaven of the sun. For a numerological analysis of the same passage, see Hardt 1973 43-52. Hardt emphasizes the first seven tercets as a group and shows how the passage is organized in terms of seven, ten, and twenty-eight (a perfect number, like six). [BACK]

102. The archetype of the distinction Beatrice draws at 10.53-54 between the planetary sun, "lo sol visibil," and the "sol degli angeli" that it signifies is the speculation of the Father in the Son, the uncreated Godhead in the incarnate Logos, as Thomas makes clear during his great cosmogony at 13.52-60 ("il suo raggiare aduna / quasi specchiato, in nove sussistenze, / eternalmente rimanendosi una," 58-60). The doubling of father and son and spiritual and sensible suns is Dante's adaptation of the Platonic World-Soul both contemplating its origin in the divine intellect, or noûs, and circling the created universe, drawing it back to its ideal archetype. This double duty is expressed in the double motions of Same and Other (see Dronke 1986 87). Dante's heaven of the sun is thus one of his most elaborate adaptations of the Platonic World-Soul to a Christian context. Indeed, nature, the sun, and the Spirit, the three most common "translations" for the anima mundi in Christian interpretation (Gregory 1958 123), are all implicit in the opening verses of Canto 10: spira at 2, ministro della natura at 28—thus they enclose the proem. [BACK]

103. "These two motions, intellectual generation and the spiration of Love, volition, are the two motions of the Trinity which find their counterpart in the cosmos, 'dove l'un moto l'altro si percuote,' insofar as the cosmos can reflect the inner life of the Trinity" (Freccero 1986 241). [BACK]

104. The rhymes gira, rote, percote, arte, dirama, torta, manco, mondano, and scriba point either directly to the celestial circles ( gira, rote, percuote, dirama, torta ) and their effects ( manco, mondano ) or to the idea of demiurgic and poetic craftsmanship ( arte, scriba ). Arte here is also the ars quaedam dei of Christ, of the Cross: the intersection of God and man; see Foster 1977 123. Other terms closely related to the movement of the circles are ordine, obliquo cerchio, strada, dritto, and torce. As Freccero (1986 258-271) shows, terza rima mediates discursive temporality and circular return—precisely the functions of Other and Same. [BACK]

105. The construction of the whole passage in terms of tercets—units of two tercets apiece, together with a second section of three tercets (beginning with the central verse "Vedi come da indi si dirama") closed out with a two-tercet coda—is itself reminiscent of the structure of a canzone stanza: two equal pedes, a sirma beginning with concatenatio (which often corresponds to the central continue

      verse of the stanza, as in "Io son venuto"), and the tornata. The modularity of the canzone stanza, significantly expressed in the Paradiso in a passage describing the junction of Same and Other, is much in evidence here as a constructive principle. [BACK]

106. Though less determinably, Dante's use of chiama in "Così" ("e'l sangue . . . / fuggendo corre verso / lo cor, che'l chiama") may be recalled in the use of chiama in rhyme ( Paradiso 10.15); the same may be said of percuotere ("Così," 35; Paradiso 10.9). [BACK]

107. For the Timaeus on the irrationality of the Other, see Introduction, pp. 48-49. [BACK]

108. The dance of the two groups is compared at 10.79 to the movement of girls performing a ballata, which includes both stanzas and a repeated ripresa or ritornello (Dante 1979b 3:164); in this allusion to a poetic form in the context of solar motion Dante would seem to recall Macrobius's observation that the movements of dancers and of strophic forms imitate the motions of the heavens (see Introduction, pp. 30-31). [BACK]

109. The sun is the fourth planet but also the mystical center of the zodiac, within which dance the planets, the choreae stellarum of Calcidius. See Freccero 1986 227-231; and for the cosmic dance in Calcidius, Miller 1986 232-273. [BACK]

110. Rabuse (1978 9) cites "summe fulgens, summe calens." [BACK]

111. See 12.97, "Con dottrina e con volere insieme," said of Dominic. [BACK]

112. Freccero (1986 242-243) notes that the parallel syntax of the Father's relation to the Son in the prologue ("l'amore che l'un e l'altro eternamente spira") suggests that the processions of the Word and of Love—in other words, of intellect and will—are the archetypes of the double solar motion, "l'un moto e l'altro," acted out in the double dance of spirits. For examples of the binary phrase, see 10.2 (God and Logos), 10.9 (two cosmic motions), 10.97-103 (the listing of the sapientes ), 10.142 (the parts of the clock), 11.35-37 (Seraphic Francis and Cherubic Dominic), 11.3-5 (the two circles as millstones), 12.34 (Francis and Dominic again), 12.126 (the two extreme factions of Franciscans), 13.16 (the rays of the two circles), 13.16-18 (the movement of the two circles), 13.34-36 (the two questions Thomas raises and answers), 13.45 (Christ and Adam, the two perfect men), and 14.67 (the two choirs, that is, the two circles). [BACK]

113. See also tin tin (10.143); se'l vero è vero (10.113); foglio a foglio (12.121); giù d'atto in atto (13.62); uno due e tre . . . tre e'n due e'n uno (14.28-29). [BACK]

114. The principle of two related motions also appears throughout in the form of coordinated terms ( risalir and discende [10.87]; estrema a intima [12.21]; surgere and cadere [13.142]; chiarezza e ardor [14.40]) and coordinated clauses (12.78-79; 13.52-53, 82-84, 97-100). A passage like 12.22-24 is constructed entirely of paired elements: "Poi che'l tripudio e l'altra festa grande, / sì del cantare e sì del fiammeggiarsi / luce con luce gaudiose e blande." The same may be said, on a much larger scale, for 13.1-27. [BACK]

115. The two questions give rise in turn to a set of pairs and variations: Thomas repeats verbatim the phrase regarding the Dominicans that mystifies the pilgrim: "U' ben s'impingua, se non si vaneggia" (10.96, 11.39; first hemistich repeated also at 11.25). But he both repeats and twice varies the remark he continue

      makes about Solomon, passing from non surse il secondo (10.114; repeated once verbatim at 11.26) to non ebbe il secondo (13.47) and fu sanza pare (13.89). [BACK]

116. "Dal centro al cerchio, e sì dal cerchio al centro" (14.1): the construction is a chiasmus. Dante certainly knew that the Greek X was named Chi (see p. 333 above for Calcidius's translation, which uses chi ). It is tempting to think that the superabundance of the word chi in Canto 11.4-8 (eight instances in anaphora) is a reflection of the Greek letter. The celestial Chi is a cosmic sign of the reconciliation, the joining ( horizon ) of divine and human in Christ; Christ in Greek begins with this letter. See Rabuse 1976 200; and Freccero 1986 242. [BACK]

117. The Cristo rhyme-word concentrated at the center in Dominic's case is matched in the vita of Francis by distribution of Cristo to the center ("pianse con Cristo," 11.72), latter half (11.104-107), and early part ("nacque un sole," 11.50; this is also a sol oriens, Christ) of Francis's life. For the Cristo rhyme in the Paradiso, see Hardt 1973. [BACK]

118. There are more than a dozen passages where the two biographies show parallels or resemblances in identically numbered verses: 35-39 and 46-51 (discussed in our text), 57, 59, 61-62 (the mystic marriages), 64, 68, 71-72 ( Cristo ), 79, 83, 100, and 107. [BACK]

119. It is known that Dante drew the idea—and the phrasing—for the pairing of Francis and Dominic in terms of cardinal points from a prophecy of Joachim of Fiore: "erunt duo viri, unus hinc, alius inde" (see Dante 1979b 3:173). Joachim and Sigier form yet another pair: of heterodox figures. [BACK]

120. Questo is thus a shifter here. In Dominic's case, opinion has varied between a summer solstitial sun—because of its lunga foga, its long course—and another equinox; but Moore (1903) shows that language and situation require a northwesterly, or late summer, sun, moving from the solstice toward the autumnal equinox. [BACK]

121. In the biographies, the "arco della vita" of Francis is presented as a single day, that of Dominic as a season, from sowing to harvest. This portrayal corresponds to the emphasis on Francis himself as a sun, who generates, and on Dominic as a farmer, an agricola, who tills and weeds. [BACK]

122. In a technical sense, the systematic linking of the sapienza (11.38, used only here and at 23.37, in Gemini) of the wisemen with eloquence is a function of the sphere of the sun, where the Son—Wisdom—is considered by the angelic order of the Virtues in relation to the Holy Spirit, the poet's dictator. See Foster 1977 121; also Freccero 1986 241-243; and Dronke 1986 94. [BACK]

123. Dominic is the lover and champion, drudo, who defends his beloved as a paladino, giving rise to the series of metaphors of soldiery: militare (12.34); esercito, insegna (12.37); imperador, milizia (12.40); campione (12.43); drudo (12.55). The court of the sun is rich in cortesia; Dominic the paladin fights his battles on the field of honor ( campo , 12.108); the followers of Francis strip ( scalzasi, 11.83) before the beauty of Poverty, the bride. St. Thomas's phrase in rebuke of his order ("U' ben s'impingua, se non si vaneggia," 11.139) might have been drawn from an allegorical eclogue. On this last passage, see Dronke 1986 86, associating Thomas's diction with the language of the Song of Songs. [BACK]

124. The figure of the bride—Poverty and Faith—in the lives of the reform- soft

      ers derives from the Song of Songs, long viewed by exegetes as an allegory of Christ's love for the Church. For the church as bride, cf. 10.140 ("la sposa di Dio") and the sposa (Poverty) in the narrative of Francis's life (11.32, 84). See Priest 1972; Freccero 1986 232; and Dronke 1986 94-96, 100-102. See also Dronke 1986 101 on Richard of St. Victor's allegorical exposition of the Song of Songs. [BACK]

125. Francis makes the earth feel his virtue as he rises from his birthplace ("Non era ancor molto lontan dall'orto, / ch'ei cominiciò a far sentir la terra / della sua gran virtute alcun conforto," 11.55-57), while Dominic's conception and birth are evidence of the virtue of the sun ("e come fu creata, fu repleta / sì la sua mente di viva virtute, / che nella madre lei fece profeta," 12.58-60) and he is defined as reflected light ( splendore, 11.39). [BACK]

126. Such an inference regarding the virtù and sapientia of the poet demonstrated in the art of the heaven itself is not without precedent in commentary on the canto. Readers have noted that Dante's inclusion of figures like Boethius and Sigieri, who were victims of injustice, echoes his own historical status as exile and victim; see Dante 1979b 3:157. [BACK]

127. The dominant pair, Adam and Christ, the creature and his incarnate Creator, mark the possible limit of human virtue ("quantunque alla natura umana lece / aver di lume, tutto fosse infuso / da quel valor che l'uno e l'altro fece," 13.43-45); in 13.82-84, Thomas refers to the Incarnation, the supreme act of fecundation: "Così fu fatta già la terra degna / di tutta l'animal perfezione; / così fu fatta la Vergine pregna." For the pilgrim's infusion by the Apostles in Gemini, see below, pp. 242-244. [BACK]

128. See Ferrante 1984 273-274: "In the Sun, which is the turning point in the journey, Dante reaches the climax of diversity, the greatest number of individual souls to be seen or named in any sphere of Paradise, and at the same time the beginning of a special unity, the appearance of all the souls in one symbolic figure, in this case concentric circles." [BACK]

129. The sun's generative power is at its strongest at the time of the pilgrim's journey, when it is near the vernal equinox. In the heaven of the sun, this power is demonstrated by the richness of reference to flowers, garlands, vines, roots, shrubs, fruits, stocks, and gardens, as well as to pasturing and husbandry: e.g., infiora (10.91, 14.12); serto (10.102); pianta (11.137); rosa (12.19, 13.135); ghirlanda (12.19); fronde (12.46); agricola (12.67); orto (12.68, 103); vigna (12.86); vignaio (12.87); seme, fascia (12.96); sterpi (12.100); arbuscelli (12.105); coltura (12.119); paglia (13.36); seme (13.69); legno, specie (13.70); biade (13.132); prun (13.134); agno (10.94); peculio (11.124). The sun, like Gemini, is a garden; as a vinekeeper ( vignaio ), Dominic cooperates with sunlight in producing healthy fruit: "gran dottor si feo, / tal che si mise as circuir la vigna, / che tosto imbianca, se il vignaio è reo" (12.85-87). For the topos of the garden in relation to the monastic and fraternal orders and the cantos of Francis and Dominic, see Mazzotta 1979 109-117, with scrupulous résumés of previous readings of these cantos; see also Ferrante 1984 298. [BACK]

130. Timaeus 36b (Corford 1937 142); and see Freccero 1986 77. [BACK]

131. See Chapter 2, pp. 92-96. As if to insist on this point, Dante uses continue

      meare to describe illumination (in the sun, 13.54; and in Gemini, 23.79), rather than as the term for the descent and return of the soul, as in Macrobius 1970a 48 (speaking of the gates of souls, located where the Milky Way crosses the zodiac): "per has portas animae de caelo in terras meare et de terris in caelum remeare creduntur." For discussion of Paradiso 4.49-60, see Freccero 1986 223-224. [BACK]

132. For this order in the sestina, see Chapter 3, note 57. [BACK]

133. In addition to "O qui perpetua," see Boethius Consolatio 4 m. 6.44-48:

Hic est cunctis communis amor 
Repetuntque boni fine teneri, 
Quia non aliter durare queant, 
Nisi converso rursus amore 
Refluant causae quae dedit esse. [BACK]

134. Dante lists the pilgrimage sites in a famous passage (chap. 40) of the Vita nuova; see Dante 1984 237-241. [BACK]

135. In Macrobius 1970a 48, the Milky Way, located in the starry sphere, is the precise point whence just souls descend and where they return, hinc profecti hunc revertuntur. For Macrobius's error in placing the crossing of the equator and Milky Way, see Chapter 2, p. 91 and note 60. [BACK]

136. In his discussion of this word in Convivio 4.6.3, Dante does not mention, but certainly knew, Uguccione's derivation of auctor from augere, to increase. On this etymology, see Toynbee 1902 102. [BACK]

137. Echoes of Virgil, Statius, Horace, and Lactantius have been noted in the beautiful verses on the mother bird in Canto 23.1-12; see Dante 1979b 3:368. [BACK]

138. At 24.139-141, Dante's recitation of the Athanasian creed, he refers to the truth of the faith as "come stella in ciel in me scintilla"; at 29.87, the truth of Beatrice's explanation shines like a star, "come stella in ciel il ver si vide." [BACK]

139. Sapegno (Dante 1957b 1090) cites Daniel 12:3: "Qui autem docti fuerint, fulgebunt, quasi splendor firmamenti; et qui ad iustitiam erudiunt multus, quasi stellae in perpetuas aeternitates." [BACK]

140. For other texts, see Wingell 1981. Wingell (pp. 130-132) documents the association of the stars with the virtues and with the gifts of the Spirit, represented in the Purgatorio by a candelabrum Dante compares (after Apocalypse 1: 20) to the seven stars of the Wain ( Purgatorio 30.1). [BACK]

141. Bosco and Reggio (Dante 1979b 3:389) recall that Mary is stella matutina in the litanies. The Virgin as bel zaffiro (23.101) drives home her stellar status, for medieval "sapphire" was usually lapis lazuli, whose field of blue speckled with iron pyrites makes it look like a sky strewn with stars (thus inzaffira ). See Isidore Etymologiarum liber 16.9.2 ( PL 82.574b): "habens pulveres aureos sparsos." [BACK]

142. Dante names the sun in Gemini eight times—three more than in the heaven of the sun. [BACK]

143. "Un sol che tutte quante l'accendea, / come fa'l nostro le viste superne" (23.29); "il bel giardino / che sotto i raggi di Cristo s'infiora" (23.71-72); "Come a raggio di sol, che puro mei / per fratta nube" (23.79-80). Each heaven, more- soft

      over, includes a passage where the principal luminaries—sun, moon, and stars—are in effect represented together (10.64-69, 76; 23.25-30). As Scaglione (1967 157) notes, the collocation evokes Revelations 8:12; it is also hexaemeral (Genesis 1:14-17)—for which see Zahlten 1969 174-176. [BACK]

144 . Girare appears five times in the heaven of the sun and eight times in Gemini, out of a total of twenty-three instances; poli appears as a rhyme only at 10.78 and 24.11, where it rhymes with oriuoli, a variant of orologio, which appears at 10.139 (there are no other instances in the poem); circulare appears only at 13.21 ("che circulava il punto dov'io era") and 23.109 ("Così la circulata melodia"); corona, which appears twice in the sun (10.65, 11.97), appears also at 23.95; ballo appears only at 10.79 and 25.103. For the cosmic dance in the Paradiso, see Miller 1977 276-277. [BACK]

145. The scholastic terminology and university pedagogy of the exams echoes the pilgrim's discussions with the sapientes in the heaven of the sun. Note the use of sapienza, for example, used in the Paradiso only at 11.38 (of Solomon) and at 23.37; and of sillogizzare and sillogismo, both used in the Commedia only in the sun (10.138, 11.2) and in Gemini (24.77, 24.94). [BACK]

146. For military metaphors, compare primipilo (24.59), baron (24.115, 26.22; of the apostles), principe (25.23), stuolo (25.25), conti (25.42), and imperator (25.38) with the language used of Francis and Dominic; see above, note 123. [BACK]

147. Beatrice, the tenor of the simile that opens Canto 23, is awaiting the rising/noon sun of Christ, just as in the heaven of the sun the Church, bride of the Song of Songs, "mattina lo sposo perche l'ami." For Beatrice's relation to the Bride, see Freccero 1986 232, 237. [BACK]

148. For the double triumphs, see Gmelin 1954 3:406-408, 414-415. [BACK]

149. For the triumphs, see note 148; the militant pilgrim is at 25.52, 57. [BACK]

150. Peter and Paul (24.62); John and James (25.94); master and disciple (25.64: "come discente ch'a dottor seconda"). Dante, of course, thought James the Great and John the Evangelist to be brothers, the sons of Zebedee (Matthew 5:21). Dragonetti (1968 355) discusses the heaven of Gemini as a union of heaven and earth represented by Castor and Pollux; see also p. 369, where Dante's adjective dia (26.11) is linked to the Greek prefix signifying "double" or "twin." See above, pp. 361-362. [BACK]

151. See Convivio 2.14.3-5. The number 1,022 is broken down into digits that reflect local motion (2), alteration (10), and growth (1,000), all of which concern physics. The Milky Way signifies metaphysics because the stars that are the source of its light are difficult to see. In the heaven of Gemini, the presence of James, "per cui si vicita Galicia" (25.18), alludes to the Milky Way, one name of which is la via di Sa' Iacopo. In addition, the souls are placed around fixed poles in 24.11, while the text alludes to the southern pole by positing a sun in Cancer in midwinter (25.101). Special mention is reserved for the precession of the equinoxes and the unwintering of January, some forty lines after the pilgrim and Beatrice depart from the fixed stars for the Primum Mobile (27.142-144). The relation of the heaven of the stars to the sun reiterates the links: the sun is the chariot that, in one explanation Dante cites ( Convivio 2.14.5), ran amok and continue

      burned the sky, creating the Milky Way; fifteen of the twenty-four stars that make up the imaginary constellation in the extended simile of Paradiso 13 are drawn precisely from Alfraganus's list of 1,022 used in the Convivio passage on the fixed stars; and the same simile imagines the northern, the visible, pole. [BACK]

152. Blasucci (1969 19) lists these among examples of Dante's "energy." [BACK]

153. "I lupi che . . . danno guerra" (25.6); "lupi rapaci in vesta di pastor" (27.55). For the biblical sources, see Dante 1979b 3:448-449. [BACK]

154. Both passages depend on Ars poetica, 38-40, comparing the poetic subject to a physical burden: "Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, aequam / viribus et versate diu, quid ferre recusent, / quid valeant umeri." This is attributed to "Magister noster Oratius" and cited at De vulgari eloquentia 2.iv.4 (Dante 1979 164). [BACK]

155. Wingell (1981 128-129) cites, in another context, Augustine's contrast of the dark, chilled, fallen angels ( tenebrosi frigidique ) with the warm breath of Pentecostal inspiration. [BACK]

156. Mary's triumph, like that of Christ, is elaborately symmetrical, a textual circle. We note here a few examples: quivi at verseheads at 23.73 and 23.136; the "splendori . . . fulgorati" of the spirits (at 23.82) are balanced by the candori of those at 23.124, and the speaker's desire for Mary (at 23.88-89) by that of the souls reaching out at 23.121-124. Qualunque melodia (23.97) is paired with the circulata melodia of 23.109. There is a parallel between circling and crowning at 23.101, 106 ( coronava, girerommi ). The central five tercets, finally, are marked by assonance on i-a: tira, lira, inzaffira, dia, melodia, Maria (Baldelli 1973 947). [BACK]

157 . Ploia echoes its use in the heaven of the sun ("lo refrigerio dell'etterna ploia," 14.27) and pingue the use of impingua at 10.96, 11.25, and 11.139. [BACK]

158. De avi Phoenice, 41-42; cited in Dante 1979b 3:368. [BACK]

159. Adam's discussion of languages as leaves on a tree, "come fronda in ramo" ( Paradiso 26.135-138), adapting Horace's figure in Ars poetica, 60-62, is continuous with the identification of poetry with the leaves of the laurel ("la fronda peneia," as in Paradiso 1.25-33); see the related images of poetic fame as erba in Purgatorio 11.115-117. In Paradiso 26.64-66, the pilgrim proclaims his love for all the leaves in God's garden: "le fronde onde s'infronda tutto l'orto / de l'ortolano etterno"—that is, all the creatures. For the recurring metaphor of infrondescence, see Dragonetti 1968 347-357. [BACK]

160. For the alba, see Saville 1972; for the poet in relation to birdsong, see "Io son venuto," 27-39, with our discussion in Chapter 2, pp. 76-79. [BACK]

161. See Introduction, pp. 34-35; for a full discussion of this poem in Dante's Commedia (not including the allusion here), see Moleta 1979-80. [BACK]

162.   .

Così la donna mia stava eretta 
   e attenta, rivolta inver la plaga 
   sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta.

      Beatrice is looking at the location of the solstitial sun at noon, for the sun shows least haste both when it is near the meridian and when it apparently reverses direction, in the ecliptic, at the solstices, especially the summer solstice. That continue

      Christ is at solstice and the planetary sun at equinox is one measure by which Christ transcends the planetary sun; but in another sense the two suns, planetary and supracelestial, are complementary, paired suns, the sun of heaven and the sun of earth. [BACK]

163. Dante uses almi of the apostles at 25.138. [BACK]

164. "Come fantolin che inver' la mamma / tende le braccia, poi che'l latte prese" (23.122). For Beatrice and the Virgin linked by the similes of Canto 23, see Scaglione 1967 167. [BACK]

165. Dragonetti (1968 362) points out the etymological play between Galassia and Galicia: the relation of east and west, sunrise (Galilee) and sunset (Galicia), reiterates the relation of Francis and Dominic in the heaven of the sun. For Macrobius (1970a 48), the milkiness of the galaxy is consonant with its role as the gate of souls: "ideo primam nascentibus offerri ait lactis alimoniam, quia primus eis motus a lacteo incipit in corpora terrena labentibus." [BACK]

166. In Dante's first eclogue to Giovanni del Virgilio, the allegory of poems milked from the Muses' breasts is frequent: del Virgilio's first eclogue is "lituris / Pyerio demulsa sinu" (1-2); del Virgilio's poetic studies have made him full and eloquent, "lacte canoro / viscera plena ferens et plenus usque palatum" (31-32); finally, the first ten cantos of the Paradiso are ten vascula of milk to be sent to del Virgilio drawn from an ewe lactis abundans (59-64; Dante 1979e). [BACK]

167. For the propitious moment of the Incarnation, see Monarchia 1.11.1-2. At Convivio 1.21, after describing the conception and development of the embryo, Dante offers that if the heavens were at their best, the child born under them "sarebbe un altro Iddio incarnato." The theologians, orbiting the pilgrim, also foreshadow Gabriel's circulation around Mary. We recall the description, in the sun, of how matter was prepared for the union of divine and human: "Così fu fatta già la terra degna / di tutta l'animal perfezione; / così fu fatta la Vergine pregna" (13.82-84). [BACK]

168. Gabriel's song is foreshadowed by the tone of Solomon's voice in the heaven of the sun ("una voce modesta, / forse qual fu dall'angelo a Maria," 14.35-36). The echo of Solomon in Gabriel links the language of the Canticle in the heaven of the sun, used to celebrate the union of the Church with the bridegroom and his followers Francis and Dominic, with the divine marriage of the Holy Spirit and the flesh of Mary in the heaven of the stars. Sposa, which appears in the sun at 10.140, 11.32 and 84 (Poverty), and 12.43—all but once of the bride of Christ—appears three times in Gemini (25.111, 26.93, 27.40); its other uses in the Paradiso are at 31.3 and 32.128. [BACK]

169. In Convivio 4.21.10 Dante refers to the womb as recettaculo (4) and to the dwelling of the soul in heaven (the passage is translated from Cicero) as abitaculo (4.21.9). Cf. the Virgin's womb as albergo of Christ (23.105), a term that also reflects liturgical language. [BACK]

170. Rabuse (1978 19) cites Gregory the Great ( Moralia, Ep. miss . 12 c.55 n.64) on the meaning of the womb in sacred speech: "in sacro eloquio ventris vel uteri nomine mens solet intelligi." break [BACK]

171. As Beatrice says of the pilgrim in Purgatorio 30.109-114:

Non pur per ovra delle rote magne, 
   che drizzan ciascun seme ad alcun fine 
   secondo che le stelle con compagne, 
ma per larghezza di grazie divine, 
   che sì alti vapor hanno a lor piova, 
   che nostre viste là non van vicine.

      The pilgrim's destiny is a result of planetary influence, free will, and grace. [BACK]

172. The crossing of the Milky Way with the zodiac is the gate through which souls enter time. Macrobius put the gate at the solstitial points of Capricorn and Cancer, but in fact the Milky Way traverses the Zodiac at Gemini and Libra (see Chapter 2, note 60). [BACK]

173. In the heaven of Mars, where the pilgrim's baptistery is "il bel ovil di San Giovanni," Florence is remembered as sober and chaste "nella sua cerchia antica" and the cradles ( le culle ) carefully tended by loving nurses. [BACK]

174. For the sun in the Ram, see Currado Malaspina's prophetic words (echoing "Io son venuto") to the pilgrim in Purgatorio (8.133-139):

Ed elli: "Or va; che 'l sol non si recorca 
   sette volte nel letto che 'l Montone 
   con tutti e quattro i piè cuopre ed inforca, 
che cotesta cortese oppinïone 
   ti fia chiavata in mezzo della testa 
   con maggior chiovi che d'altrui sermone, 
se corso di giudicio non s'arresta."

      See also Ecloga 2.1-2 (Dante 1979e): "Velleribus Colchis prepes detectus Eous/ alipedesque alii pulcrum Titana ferebant." [BACK]

175. The horoscope of Florence, which began its new year on March 25, ab Incarnatione, may also be implicit: March 25 was the ideal date of the city's foundation; Dante's crowning and the city's birthday would represent, in their simultaneity, a reconciliation. Since in Dante's time most baptisms occurred at Easter or just after, Dante's commemoration of his baptism would likely fall between the possible dates of Easter—in other words, almost entirely within the sign of Aries. [BACK]

176. For a reading of this passage with emphasis on the pilgrim's fulfillment of his prophetic destiny, see Sarolli 1971 381-419; see also Mazzotta 1979 116-123. [BACK]

177. This conception of the poem as including both the astricolae and the infera regna recurs in Dante's first eclogue to Giovanni del Virgilio (48-50), precisely where Tityrus (Dante) is considering the question of poetic crowning. [BACK]

178. Florence is the nido from which Dante will chase the two Guidi in Purgatorio 11.99. [BACK]

179. Compare the similarly hypothetical "S'io torni mai," at the pilgrim's entrance to Gemini, and "S'io avessi le rime aspre e chiocce," beginning Canto 32: the first, appropriately yearning in its hope of heaven; the second, a modesty continue

      topos disclaiming a skill subsequently demonstrated. See Bosco and Reggio's remarks in Dante 1979b 3:411. [BACK]

180. As the commentators note, this image also echoes the imagined "ascension" of Beatrice in Vita nuova 23.25. [BACK]

181.   .

Ficca di retro a li occhi tuoi la mente, 
   e fa di quelli specchi a la figura 
   che 'n questo specchio ti sarà parvente 
                   (21.16-18)

      is echoed by

      For Jacob's ladder as a model of the angelic hierarchies, see Rabuse 1972 62, quoting Simon of Tournai: "Hac distinctione angelorum textitur aurea catena hominum sive scala Iacob in qua vidit angelos ascendentes et descendentes." [BACK]

182. Moore (1895 95) notes the relation of svernare to Dante's other coinages like sfogliare ( Purgatorio 23.58), smagare, etc. See also Blasucci 1969 17-18. We prefer ruggire to the more frequent raggiare because of the biblical parallels: Jeremiah 25: 30, Hosea 11.10, Joel 3.16, and Amos 1.2; the last two are accounts of the dies Domini. [BACK]

183. For parallels to sbernare and the implications of Aries here, including the evocation of the lyric Natureingang, see Contini 1970b 212-213; and Kirkpatrick 1978 162-166. [BACK]

184. See Epistola 13.68 for Dante's etymological discussion of empireo ("et dicitur empyreum, quod est idem quod celum igne sui ardoris flagrans"). For Dante's use of cristallino for the Primum Mobile, see Convivio 2.14.19. [BACK]

185. Dante's presentation of John between references to winter ("l'inverno," 25.102; "Capra del ciel," 27.69) is perhaps less arbitrary than it seems. Dante's accumulation of apostles in Gemini includes Peter in person and Paul by reference (Peter's caro frate of 24.62); the pair have their festival on June 29, not long after the summer solstice. Although the feast of John the Baptist —implicitly remembered in Paradiso 25.8-9—is June 24, even nearer the solstice, the feast of John the Evangelist is on December 27, near the winter solstice (Cattabiani 1988 236-238). Dante's ideal solstice in Gemini thus includes the Evangelist, feasted near the winter solstice, made into a sun that fills the whole year with light. [BACK]

186. In his De universo ( PL 111.472), Rabanus Maurus, after showing that crystal signifies baptism and the immutability of the angels, concludes: "Aqua ergo in crystallum versa est quando corruptionis eam infirmitatem, per resurrectionem suam ad incorruptionis firmitatem est immutata." [BACK]

187. The three substances named suggest a gamut concluding in cristallo. continue

      Glass is an artificial gem finest when most like a crystal: "Maximus tamen honor in candido vitro, proximoque in crystalli similitudine" (Isidore Etymologiarum liber 16.4, PL 82.538a). Amber is an organic gem struck into lapidary quality by the heat of the sun; as a resin it is a gum, and thus the etymon ofgemma: "Gemmae vocatae, quod instar gumi transluceant" ( Etymologiarum liber 16.6.3). As electrum, moreover-often confused with the metal alloy—it was mystically understood as the union of the two natures in Christ; see Rabanus De universo 15 ( PL 111.473): "nisi quod in electro aurum et argentum miscentur, ut res una ex metallis duobus fiat, in qua et per argentum auri claritas temperatur, et per claritatem auri species clarescat argenti. In redemptore autem nostro utraeque naturae, id est divinitas et humanitas, inconfuse atque inseparabiliter sibimet sunt unitae." [BACK]

188. For the quotation, see Convivio 2.3.9. Dragonetti (1968 379) reads cristallo as Cristo-stallo and argues for the progressive crystallization of the whole cosmos, enveloped as it is by the maggior corpo of the First Heaven. In this context, does Dante's ambra recall Arnaut's sestina rhyme-word cambra? [BACK]

189. Compare, with respect to poems as charms, Virgil's Eclogue 8, where adynata and spells ( carmina ) combine in the speakers' attempts to influence their lovers. [BACK]

190. In effect, then, the raggiare of the heavens would seem to invoke the apokatastasis, the return of all the heavens to their original positions at the last Great Year, an event traditionally associated with cataclysm and upheaval. Servius notes, in his glosses on Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, that the return of the Golden Age is one of the topics of the apokatastasis (Thilo and Hagen 1923-27 3/1:45). See Macrobius 1970a 128-129 (Macrobius follows Cicero in thinking the Great Year to be fifteen thousand years). [BACK]

191. It might be supposed that such a gem would be incised with the figure of Gemini, the poet's natal sign. Albertus Magnus (1967 141) notes that stones carved with the Gemini predispose wearers "toward friendship and righteousness and good manners, diligent observation of laws, and concord." [BACK]

192. Dante probably associated Plato's Great Year ( Timaeus 39d) with the period of the precession of the equinoxes that he invokes in Paradiso 27, as does Macrobius ( Commentarii 2.11 [1970a 128-129]). His conception of the heaven of the stars as representative of metaphysics ( Convivio 2.14.11) rests on the notion, also mentioned by Macrobius, that the precessional motion of the stars is invisible to the eye ("quasi ci tiene ascoso"). [BACK]

193. Dante refers to the precession of the equinoxes at Convivio 2.14.11-13, in his discussion of the sphere of the fixed stars: "E per lo movimento quasi insensibile che fa da occidente in oriente per uno grado in cento anni significa le cose incorruttibili, le quali ebbero da Dio cominciamento e creazione e non averanno fine; chè fine de la circulazione è redire a uno medesimo punto, al quale non tornerà questo cielo, secondo questo movimento. Chè dal cominciamento del mondo poco più de la sesta parte è volto; e noi siamo già ne l'ultima etade del secolo, e attendemo veracemente la consumazione del celestiale movimento." See Pecoraro 1987 25-29. break [BACK]

194. In his treatise on engraved gems, Albertus Magnus accounts for their loss of power over time (see Introduction, note 93). [BACK]

195. See Marbodus ( PL 171.1770a): "veras a falsis labor est discernere gemmas." [BACK]

196. Divellere also might afford a rhyme for the last tercet in each cantica, which always concludes on the word stelle. There is none such in the Inferno (the rhyme is belle ), but in the Purgatorio the rhyme is novelle (33.143) and in the Paradiso, velle (33.143), a Latinism for the will—no form of divellere, then, but a kind of homonymic rhyme echoing the divellere/ vello nexus noted in Inferno 34 and in Gemini. If our criteria seem too permissive, it might help to add that Dante insists on the etymological play, both at the end of the Purgatorio ("rifatto sì come piante no velle / rino vellate di no vella fronda," 33.143-44), carefully echoing pianta and rinacque in Purgatorio 1.135-36, where avellere appears (1.136), and at the end of the Paradiso (33.141-43), where emphasis is on forms related to volere and alliteration on v: "sua voglia venne. / A l'alta fantasia qui mancò possa; / ma già vol g eva il mio disio e'l velle." [BACK]

197. Virgil uses avellere (6.143) and convellere (6.149); Dante's debt is most immediate in the parallels between the replacement of the rush plucked in Purgatorio 2 and that of the Golden Bough: "primo avulso non deficit alter / aureus" ( Aeneid 6.143-144). [BACK]

198. See Ecloga 2.48-50 (Dante 1979e):

      cum mundi circumflua corpora cantu
      astricoleque meo velut infera regna patebunt,
      devincire caput hedera lauroque iuvabit.