1. It is on this single passage, for instance, that Mengaldo rests his assertion that the De vulgari eloquentia "assigns the limits" of the petrose (Dante 1979a 8, 234-235).

2. Mengaldo (ibid. 145 n .9) notes the important parallel in Convivio 1.5. [BACK]

1. It is on this single passage, for instance, that Mengaldo rests his assertion that the De vulgari eloquentia "assigns the limits" of the petrose (Dante 1979a 8, 234-235).

2. Mengaldo (ibid. 145 n .9) notes the important parallel in Convivio 1.5. [BACK]

3. On the ceremony of investiture, see M. Bloch 1939; Keen 1984; and Flori 1976, 1978, and 1979. [BACK]

4. The paragon of knighthood, Lancelot, on the day of his knighting, took on two very difficult quests, according to the Vulgate Cycle (that Dante knew well the Livres de Lancelot dou Lac is guaranteed by his references to its details in Inferno 5 and Paradiso 16); the circumstances of the second are illuminating. During the feast in Lancelot's honor a knight enters, sent by the Lady of Nohaut, beleaguered by an enemy of hers, to ask King Arthur, her liege lord, to send her a champion. Lancelot breaks in and asks to be assigned this mission. King Arthur at first refuses, saying it is most dangerous and requires an experienced knight. Now—and this is the point that interests us—Lancelot reminds Arthur that this is the first request he has made since his knighting and that if Arthur should deny it, his new knight will be greatly shamed before all men (Micha 1978-83 8:260-283). Here is the sense of the term prerogativa —that is what Lancelot claims, a request ( rogativa ) that takes precedence over other requests. It is not a matter of indulging the new knight, but of allowing him the continue

      scope to prove his worth, as, of course, Lancelot amply does. And Dante, too, in our view. [BACK]

5. No one supposes that the second nisi forte clause characterizes a fault; Mengaldo comments: "La lenium asperorumque rithimorum mixtura  . . . risponde al canone fondamentale del De vulgari eloquentia" (Dante 1979a 235 n .4). It is true that Dante identifies "ipsa inutilis equivocatio" as always a fault; and the traditional view has no doubt rested on the assumption that Dante is referring to "Amor, tu vedi ben" there also. That is by no means the sense of the passage, however, and to take "ipsa inutilis equivocatio" as referring to "Amor, tu vedi ben" requires us to assume that the equivocal rhymes in that poem are "useless"—a view we argued against in Chapter 4.

      The only other critic, to our knowledge, who interprets the reference to "Amor, tu vedi ben" in a positive light is Bernhard König (1983 246): "I see no distancing in this sentence, but rather a proud assertion of the exceptional character of the canzone ["Amor, tu vedi ben"]. It is the product of what was in a sense a heroic effort, such as is possible only once in a lifetime, when all one's powers are at highest tension. . . . Dante is not criticizing his unusual rhyme scheme; rather he is justifying it as part of an unprecedented poetic project, whose uniqueness the concluding verses of the canzone had already proclaimed." This seems to us the correct view. [BACK]

6. See the material assembled by Keen (1984), esp. pp. 80-81, the entirely characteristic urgings given new knights: "Seek therefore this day to do deeds that will deserve to be remembered, for every new knight should make a good beginning" (from a thirteenth-century romance) and "it is my wish that this day you shall show such prowess as it befits you to show: that is why I have set you in the van of the battle: there so do that you may win honor" (from Froissart). [BACK]

7. See Rabuse 1957; Schnapp 1987. [BACK]

8. Paradiso 25.2 identifies the poema as one "al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra," and in Paradiso 27.64-66 St. Peter urges Dante to speak: "e tu, figluol, che per lo mortal pondo / ancor giù tornerai, apri la bocca, / e non asconder quel ch'io non ascondo." But these and other instances fall far short of the explicit pronouncements of Cacciaguida, which is the final answer to the question Dante puts to Virgilio in Inferno 2: "Ma io perché venirvi?" It is really the unique undertaking of the poem that explains Dante's unique journey; Beatrice's explanation in Purgatorio 30.136-138 is on a different allegorical level:

Tanto giù cadde, che tutti argomenti 
    a la salute sua eran già corti, 
    fuor che mostrarli le perdute genti. [BACK]

9. As Dante knew, men were often knighted on the eve of a battle; see Keen 1984 79-80. [BACK]

10. Cf. Enciclopedia dantesca, s.v. "addobbare" (1:52): "Chiosa Benvenuto: 'id est qui ita adornas istos splendore!'; e il Buti: 'Che sì li adorni questi spiriti di splendore!'. Ma alla scelta della parola D., oltre che dalla rima, fu forse tratto dalla conoscenza della sua origine (francese, adober, 'armare cavaliere'); si tratta infatti di anime di combattenti per la fede." break

      Schnapp misleadingly (perhaps inadvertently) conflates knightly investiture and assumption of the cross: he writes that addobbare is "a highly specialized term like the related verb 'decussare,' denoting the symbolic act known in the Middle Ages as 'cruce signari': an imprinting of the sign of the cross on the crusader's scapulary, signifying his transformation into a knight of the Holy Cross" (1987 137). I have found no instance of adober/addobbare in the sense of cruce signare, unless it is Dante's own metaphor here in Paradiso 15. In the rites of taking on the cross ("cruce signari") printed by Andrieu, Brundage, and Pennington, no indication is given of restriction to knights. There are no references to the military purposes of crusades (only in several of the services are there even the vaguest references to the possibility of combat: generally the prayer is that the pilgrim may voyage and return home in peace ), nor to the social status of the pilgrim, and, as Brundage points out, the ceremonies for taking on the cross grew out of the generic rites for pilgrims (not always or even principally pilgrims bound for the Holy Land; see Brundage 1966 289 n .1), in which the pilgrims' staffs and scripts were blessed. None of the services includes a symbolic blow like that of confirmation or knightly investiture. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, persons of both sexes and all social stations took the cross, including archbishops, friars, and cooks, and, among the military, squires and footsoldiers; see Powell 1986 20-21 (and see his list of known participants in the Fifth Crusade, 209-246); and Housley 1986 123-156 (I owe these references to the kindness of Richard Mather). That the ideas of Crusade and pilgrimage are closely related and in some respects inseparable is, of course, evident. But knightly investiture and becoming a pilgrim or Crusader should be sharply distinguished. [BACK]

11. Cacciaguida's use of the term is connected with his characterization of earlier, simpler Florence within the circle of its walls, in which women did not wear (rich) cinture (15.97-102). See the survey of Dante's use of cingere in Enciclopedia dantesca 2: 5-6. It is used again of knighting in Paradiso 8.146; particularly interesting is the parallel with Purgatorio 1.133: "Quivi mi cinse sì com'altrui piacque" (with the reed of humility; see below, note 19). [BACK]

12. Privilegio refers to the prerogatives of rank, as well as to the right to quarter one's arms with those of the gran barone; cf. Enciclopedia dantesca, s.v. "privilegio." [BACK]

13. There is also allusion, of course, to Matthew 10: 33, 16:24, etc., as already in the symbolic taking on of the cross of the Crusader. See Paradiso 14.103-108:

Qui vince la memoria mia lo 'ngegno; 
   ché quella croce lampeggiava Cristo, 
   sì ch'io non so trovare essempro degno; 
ma chi  prende sua croce  a segue Cristo, 
   ancor mi scuserà di quel ch'io lasso, 
   vedendo in quell' albor balenar Cristo.

      One may note that this is a very good example of nonuseless equivocal rhyme. Schnapp (1987) has a good discussion of Dante's taking on his personal cross. break [BACK]

14. Cf. the allusion to Charles of Valois in Purgatorio 20.73-75:

Sanz' arme n'esce e solo con la  lancia 
    con la qual  giostrò  Giuda, e quella ponta 
    sì, ch'a Fiorenza fa scoppiar la pancia.

      This is, of course, the same blow to which Dante refers in Paradiso 17, and it is closely related to the issue of Guido Cavalcanti's exile and death and thus to the blow that strikes Cavalcante in Inferno 10.

      One may add that Cacciaguida's urgings that Dante make all his vision manifest compare the poem to a wind that strikes the highest towers (lines 133-134), "che le più alte cime più percuote." Very deeply submerged in the blow of that wind is the blow of the metaphorical knightly lance.

      Dante uses the imagery of knightly combat in various other passages of the Commedia, whether explicitly or implicitly. Explicit is Statius's reference ( Purgatorio 22.42) to the "giostre grame" of Inferno 7, which reveals the implicit metaphor in "percoteansi incontro" ( Inferno 7.28); closely related are the implicit references to the cranes as like knights in battle formation in Purgatorio 26.43-46 and Inferno 5.46-49 (the presence and relevance of this allusion were demonstrated by Ryan). [BACK]

15. That Boccaccio was well aware of Dante's puns on names is shown by the effective use of the pun on Cavalcante in his novella on Guido, Decameron 6.9. [BACK]

16. In view of Dante's play on the names in Inferno 10 (in addition to the pun on Cavalcante, there are puns on Farinata, associated with the whited sepulchers of the Sermon on the Mount, and on Guido / guida ), there is probably a pun on Guido in Cacciaguida's name: in many respects Paradiso 14-18 is the last answer to the anxieties expressed in Inferno 10—anxicties about Guido as a poetic rival, about the social superiority of Guido and his relatives, about Guido's death and Dante's part in it, about Guido's Averroism. Cacciaguida may be understood to be dispelling these anxieties: egli caccia Guido. [BACK]

17. Dante's questioning of Cacciaguida about the obscure prophecies of Ciacco, Farinata, Brunetto, and others is already anticipated in his careful questioning of Farinata about Cavalcante's failure of foreknowledge. See Durling 1981b. [BACK]

18. Behind all the weapon metaphors lies the important passage in Ephesians 6: 10-18 (emphasis added):

De cetero, fratres, confortamini in Domino et in potentia virtutis eius. Induite vos armaturam Dei, ut possitis stare adversus insidias diaboli. Quoniam non est nobis colluctatio adversus carnem et sanguinem, sed adversus principes et potestates, adversus mundi rectores tenebrarum harum, contra spiritualia nequitiae in caelestibus. Propterea accipite armaturam Dei, ut possitis resistere in die malo et in omnibus perfecti stare. State ergo succincti lumbos vestros in veritate et induti loricam iustitiae et calceati pedes in praeparatione evangelii pacis; in omnibus sumentes scutum fidei, in quo possitis omnia tela nequissimi ignea exstinguere. Et galeam salutis adsumite et gladium spiritus, quod est verbum Dei; per omnem orationem et obsecrationem orantes omni tempore in spiritu et in ipso vigilantes in omni instantia. break

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.
(RSV)

      For Dante's definition of his role as parallel to that of the prophet Nathan confronting King David with the sin of Bathsheba, see Sarolli 1971. [BACK]

19. See Schnapp 1987 218-228 on the traditional free speech of the Christian, especially the martyr, or witness. Perhaps also, in such a richness of interconnections, it would not be farfetched to see in Dante's being girt with the reed an anticipation of a girding on of a pen (= sword), reeds being one of the traditional materials from which pens were made, mentioned in some noted biblical passages, for instance Psalm 44(46):2: "lingua mea calamus velociter scribentis." [BACK]

20. He may well have been aware that, as Keen points out (1984 72-73), the patterns of the liturgical service of investiture had originally been derived from the ceremonies of coronation of kings. [BACK]

1. Physics 4.223b.14; and Cornford 1937 103. See also Convivio 4.2.5-6: "il tempo è numero di movimento." [BACK]

2. Macrobius, as Stahl points out (Macrobius 1952 162), overlooks the fact that the zodiacal order places Mercury just above the sun, while in Plato's order the next planet is Venus. [BACK]

3. The two six-hour intervals, each occupying a quadrant, are matched by the reference in 27.143 to the nine thousand years, or three zodiacal signs (also a quadrant of the whole zodiac), required for the shift of the vernal equinox to December. In 27.115-17, Dante refers to the Primum Mobile as the standard by which time is measured; he uses as an analogy the measurement of ten by 1/2 (= 5) and 1/5 (= 2), addends of seven, and elements of the 6/1, 5/2, 4/3 system of shifting rhyme-words in the sestina. [BACK]

4. The number 1296 is of course not technically perfect. The next perfect number after 6, 7, and 10 is 28, the sum of the first seven digits; it has a special relation to the sun, since it denumerates the great solar year of a "week" of leap years (thus 7 × 4). Multiplying 28 by the great lunar "year" of 19 years (the paschal or synodal cycle), we derive the "great year" of 532 years. See Honorius of Autun De imagine mundi, chap. 79 ( PL 172.157). break [BACK]

1. For the theological meaning of the Paradiso gemstones in general, which is based on the iconography of the celestial Jerusalem (Apoc. 21.19-22) and the description of the faithful as the vivi lapides, the living stones of the spiritual city, in 1 Peter 2:4-5, see Schnapp 1986 194-198. [BACK]

2. See Intelligenza 39.1 (Battaglia 1930 153): "Elitropia v'è, cara margherita." [BACK]

3. Dante's order inverts that of Albertus Magnus (1967 39-43), which begins the discussion of color in stones with crystal and adamant, then red, blue, and green stones (the balash ruby, sapphire, and topaz are mentioned), and finally white stones—pearls.

4. Albertus Magnus (ibid. 75) holds that the balash is weaker than the carbuncle, "just as the female is as compared to the male." [BACK]

3. Dante's order inverts that of Albertus Magnus (1967 39-43), which begins the discussion of color in stones with crystal and adamant, then red, blue, and green stones (the balash ruby, sapphire, and topaz are mentioned), and finally white stones—pearls.

4. Albertus Magnus (ibid. 75) holds that the balash is weaker than the carbuncle, "just as the female is as compared to the male." [BACK]

5. On this stone, see Isidore Etymologiarum liber 16.10.6 ( PL 82.575c): "Solis gemma candida est, traxitque nomen, quod ad speciem solis in orbem fulgentes spargit radios." [BACK]

6. For the etymology of tò pân, given in the Glossa ordinaria, see Schnapp 1987 197-198. [BACK]

1. The sense of this paragraph depends on a typically medieval version of the Platonic doctrine of participation, in which something or someone is "worthy" by virtue of participation in the abstract (and higher) principle of "worth." [BACK]

2. Salus has a range of meanings, including health, safety, and salvation. [BACK]

3. Mengaldo (Dante 1979a 163) translates: "Quanto a noi, quindi, che miriamo a un'opera dottrinale, ci occorrerà emulare le loro poetiche ricchi di dottrina," clearly taking poetrias to mean "treatises on poetry." This reading does not satisfy us, especially because the ergo of the next sentence does not refer to a manner of writing treatises but to a method of writing poetry. It should be noted that the nobis of this sentence follows on "quantum . . . imitemur, tantum . . . poetemur." Dante's point is that our method of writing poetry should resemble as much as possible that of the "regular" poets, though we write in the vernacular. In other words, he is not calling attention to his echoing Horace here because that is how one writes a treatise (which would be trivial), but because he is transmitting the precepts of the method. [BACK]

4. Horace Epistles 2.1 38-140: "Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis aequam / viribus, et versate diu, quid ferre recusent, / quid valeant umeri" ("Take on a subject equal to your powers, O you who write, and consider for a long time what your shoulders are strong enough to bear, what they will refuse"). [BACK]

5 . Aeneid 6.128-129: "Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, / hoc opus, hic labor est" ("But to retrace one's steps and emerge [from the underworld] to the upper air, this is the work, this is the labor"). [BACK]

6. This and the next parenthetical comment suggest that Dante did not understand the nature of the masculine endings or of the standard ten-syllable line in Provençal and French. In Italian, most words are accented on the penult, and the normal line (the hendecasyllable) has a feminine ending. break [BACK]

7. Even numbers were thought of as female, odd as male, with three (the first odd number) being the first stable structure. These Pythagorean notions may help explain Dante's misunderstanding about the normative line in Provençal and French. [BACK]

8. This sentence uses the artifices of isocolon and inversion but lacks the socalled rhetorical color of metaphor; Dante's target is a clearly identifiable academic style. See Mengaldo, in Dante 1979a 180-181. [BACK]

9. This sentence adds to the refinements of the previous one that of sarcasm, since the marchese in question is the notorious and hated Azzo VIII (Mengaldo, in Dante 1979a 181). [BACK]

10. Mengaldo writes: "F. Forti (in Dante e Bologna, pp. 127-149) has given the best explanation: this pattern is differentiated from the preceeding ones especially by its use of the metaphoric-symbolic technique of transumption, summit of the ornatus difficilis: Florence is personified . . . as a lady 'from whose bosom have been snatched the flowers that adorned her' (her best citizens), and the one who perpetrated the violence, Charles of Valois, is identified antonomastically with Totila (the destroyer of Florence, confused with Attila . . .). . . . Charles of Valois' responsibility for the Florentine crisis of 1301-1302 is polemically associated . . . with the defeat of the Angevin war on Sicily, which took place soon after" (Dante 1979a 182-183). [BACK]

11. The obscurity of this paragraph derives from the fact that Dante shifts from one sense in which the term song can be active or passive (i.e., referring to the same event, it means the act of singing or the thing sung) to another. In the second part of the paragraph, Dante refers to two different events (the composition of the song and its later performance), and his use of the ideas of activity and passivity refers more particularly to the imparting or the receiving of form. Thus the composition of a song is active because it imposes form on the song, but its performance is passive because the singer must conform his performance to the song, take on the form of the song. [BACK]

12. These are the three types of stanza with diesis: (1) undivided first part ( frons ), divided second part ( versus ); (2) divided first part ( pedes ), undivided second part ( sirma ); (3) divided first part ( pedes ), divided second part ( versus ). [BACK]

13. Only the first line of this canzone—unique in Dante's output, as it seems, in having a frons —has survived. [BACK]

14. That there can be a stanza with diesis but with undivided first and second parts seems directly to contradict 10.3-4 above. [BACK]

15. Dante is referring to a form of internal rhyme, frequent in the dolce stil nuovo, in which the beginning of one line (usually a hendecasyllable) rhymes with the ending of the previous line; in "Poscia ch'Amor del tutto m'ha lasciato," for example, in each pes a trisyllable at the beginning of the third verse (a hendecasyllable) rhymes with the preceding verse (a quinario): break

16. The notion that the initial arrangement of the rhyme-words of a sestina (as well as the successive ones) is a matter of indifference, when much of the interest of the form in fact depends on it, seems evasive or even deliberately misleading. Similarly, Dante makes no distinction between rhymes and rhyme-words. [BACK]

17. Here is another contradiction, this time with the first sentence of this lemma 10. [BACK]

18. Dante is apparently thinking of a second part in which either (a) the concatenation or the final rhymed pair encloses two or more identical versus or (b) the order of the last versus is changed (e.g., by adding a line) to permit the rhymed ending. "Io sento sì d'amor la gran possanza" seems to be the only instance in Dante's poems; the scheme is AbC.AbC:CDDE.CDDE.FF, thus an instance of possibility (a)—i.e., the concatenation is achieved (as in "Donne ch'avete") by the presence of the C rhyme as the first in the versus, and a couplet is added after the two identical versus. [BACK]

19. This passage is discussed in Appendix 1. break [BACK]