1. Contini's view of "Amor, tu vedi ben" seems to be that the strain of maintaining the rhyme scheme leads Dante inevitably to take refuge in a series of unrelated conceits: "un tal gioco di rime sfuggirà ai processi evocativi e tenderà a provocare sintatticamente, sempre nuovi 'concetti"' (Dante 1946 160-161). [BACK]

2. Marigo calls the poem "Bizantinismo sottile e non degno di Dante, ozio di letterato medievale non di poeta" (Dante 1957a clii). [BACK]

3. Dante 1979a 234-236. [BACK]

4. Marigo again: "La canzone Amor, tu vedi ben, non è allegata come opera eccellente di poesia, ma come frutto di uno sforzo ( nisi sumus ) nuovo e ingegnosissimo di artificio tecnico . . . . Novum aliquid atque intentatum è veramente questo componimento colle sottili e non sempre chiare varietà di sensi date alle medesime parole, e col concetto della parola-rima dominante, che insiste e s'aggira intorno a quelli delle altre quattro in ogni stanza . . . . Se badiamo al paragone ut nascentis militie dies ecc., ne inferiremo che la prova del tormentatissimo artificio à stata fatta nel tempo in cui la sua fama di rimatore cominciava ad affermarsi" (Dante 1957a 272). Marigo's metaphor of the "circling" of the rhymewords is a curious abortive insight.

      A noteworthy exception to the general view is König 1983, who regards the poem as a "high point" of Dante's "Formkunst" (p. 245); see also below, notes 13 and 19; for the interpretation of the reference to the poem in De vulgari eloquentia, see Appendix 1. König's suggestive discussion sees the achievement of the poem as "die Vorstellungswelt, Sprache und metrische Formkunst des 'neuen Stils' in das vom reifen Dante für schwieriger und aussagemächtiger erachtete provenzalische Dichtungsmodell eingebracht und—unter Erhaltung ihrer Eigenart—auf eine höhere Stufe der Formgestalt gehoben zu haben" (p. 251). He mentions in passing the centrality of the rhyme-word freddo and the presence of microcosmic thinking in stanza 3. [BACK]

5. See De Bruyne 1946, vol. 3, devoted to the thirteenth century. [BACK]

6. It is associated also with color. Behind all the twelfth- and thirteenth-century discussions of claritas lies the famous passage in the Pseudo-Dionysius's discussion of beauty as a name of God ( De divinis nominibus 4; see De Bruyne 1946 3: 126 n .3; Aquinas 1950 112):

Supersubstantiale vero pulchrum pulchritudo quidem dicitur propter traditam ab Ipso omnibus existentibus, juxta proprietatem uniuscuiusque, pulchritudinem et sicut universorum consonantiae et claritatis causa, ad similitudinem luminis, cum fulgore immittens universis pulchrificas fontani radii ipsius traditiones. break

The supersubstantially beautiful is called Beauty because it gives all things their beauty according as is fitting, as the cause of the harmony and brightness of all things, in the likeness of the light which shines with its brilliance into all things, allowing them to partake of the rays of the fount itself so as to become beautiful.

      For the pervasive influence of the Pseudo-Dionysius in Gothic style, see Panofsky 1946 and von Simson 1959. See also below, notes 52, 53, and 59. [BACK]

7. This should not be thought an arbitrary observation. In De vulgari eloquentia 2.Xiii.10, Dante uses the terminology of inner and outer to refer to the middle as opposed to the first and last lines of pedes and versus; see below, Appendix 4, p. 325. [BACK]

8. So says Seneca; see Introduction, pp. 38-39. [BACK]

9. Given the astrological context, the term sembiante may include a reference to the astrological notions of aspect, rejoicing, and being cast down; see Boll, Bezold, and Gundel 1931 58-60; Gundel and Gundel 1950 2122-24. [BACK]

10. In relation to freddo, luce is a trope (genus for species, thus a synechdoche); as referring to planetary influence it is used in its proper sense. [BACK]

11. For Jean de Meun's use of this analogy, which Dante probably has in mind, see Chapter 2, note 92. [BACK]

12. Perhaps via the medical notion of the spiriti whereby the brain exercises control over the body. The theory derives from Galen, and there may well be also a reference to the widespread notion, also derived from Galen, that the vapors arising from seminal fluid were often the carriers—or recipients—of images. See Nardi 1966b. [BACK]

13. Jeanroy (1913) shows that the stanza of "Amor, tu vedi ben" is a variant of a well-established Provençal type. König (1983 247-250) has a good discussion of the relation to Provençal models. [BACK]

14. The De vulgari eloquentia of course makes no mention whatever of rhyme-words as distinct from rhymes; in fact, in citing "Amor, tu vedi ben" as an instance of repetition of the same rhyme, Dante seems to obliterate the distinction altogether. [BACK]

15 . Vita nuova 19; see Chapter 1. [BACK]

16. "Donne ch'avete," whose versus are identical with those of "Amor, tu vedi ben," is another unicum: alone among Dante's canzoni, it has pedes that are longer than its versus. As Mengaldo observes (Dante 1979a 216-217), Dante's usual practice is to have the sirma exceed the pedes, usually by one verse. Among the other peculiarities of "Donne ch'avete" are its continuing the rhymes of the first division into the second and the closeness of its form to that of the sonnet: ABBC.ABBC.CDD.CEE. Like many sonnets, and like "Amor, tu vedi ben," it has five rhymes. See König 1983 247-248; cf. note 48 below. [BACK]

17. More clearly than the number twelve (the number of lines in its stanza), six, as the number of appearances of a rhyme-word, would seem to relate this form to that of the sestina, in which (independently of the commiato ) each rhyme-word appears a total of six times. See below, note 46, and Appendix 2. [BACK]

18. The order in the commiato is the order in which the rhyme-words have predominated in the stanzas, except that the central one is repeated. break

      It is worth reflecting that if the principle of the sestina had been followed in "Amor, tu vedi ben," the result would have been the following sequence:

1.  ABA.ACA:ADD.AEE
2.  EAE.EDE:EBB.ECC
3.  CEC.CBC:CAA.CDD
4.  DCD.DAD:DEE.DBB
5.  BDB.BEB:BCC.BAA

      Dante may be presumed to have considered and rejected this scheme, which has the following disadvantages as compared with the one he actually adopted: (a) here, the third and fourth rhyme-words dominate, respectively, the third and fourth stanzas, rather than the fourth and third—in other words, the rule of changing the original order is lost at the center; (b) here, with retrogradatio cruciata, the entire first half of each successive stanza is occupied by rhymes from the second half of the previous one—in other words, Dante's scheme spreads the rhymes from one stanza out more evenly across the following one; (c) here, except for the stanza where it would appear six times, stanzas in which a rhymeword appears once alternate with ones in which it appears twice—in Dante's scheme, in contrast, as we have seen, there is an ordered progression of frequency. Each of these differences is important to the effects Dante sought in "Amor, tu vedi ben," and one of the proofs lies in the fact that the order of the rhyme-words in the commiato is determined not by the rule by which the order has been changed from stanza to stanza, but by the order in which the rhymewords have predominated; in other words, the sequence in the commiato recapitulates microcosmically the structural peculiarity of the poem as a whole. [BACK]

19. In the sestina, each rhyme-word appears twice at the corresponding point—i.e., ending the last line of one stanza and the first line of the next. König (1983 249-250) makes the interesting observation that a consequence of the form of "Amor, tu vedi ben" is that after the stanza in which a rhyme-word predominates, once it has appeared in line 2 of the immediately following stanza there is a gap of fourteen verses before its next appearance, a gap which he argues refers to the predominance in Dante's early production of stanzas of fourteen lines. [BACK]

20. This is the mode of thought that lies behind the lines in Purgatorio 2.1-9, describing how night circles opposite the sun. See Index under Inversion. [BACK]

21. Per questo freddo has the further meaning "because of this cold weather," that is, because of the special tempering the poet's nature is receiving within the ongoing processes of nature. [BACK]

22. If we list the appearances of rhyme-word C, distinguishing between the two halves of the stanzas, we have the following: (1) 1:0, (2) 0:2, (3) 0:2, (4) 4:2 (5) 1:0. Thus, within the stanza where it dominates, the frequency of the rhyme-word declines from four instances in the first half to two in the second and then, in the next half-stanza, to one, its lowest frequency. [BACK]

23. There may well be an echo in lines 11-112 of "Amor, tu vedi ben" of Jean continue

      de Meun's description of Pygmalion ( Roman de la rose, lines 20817-830 [Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun 1974 549-550]; emphasis added):

Pygmalions, uns  entaillieres 
Portreans en fust et  en pierres, 
En metaus, en os et en cires 
Et en toutes autres matires 
Qu'en puet en tex ovres trouer, 
Por son grant engin esprouver, 
[Car onc de li nus ne l'at mieudre . . .] 
Si fist une ymage d'ivuire; 
Si fist et portret l'ymagete 
Si bien compassee et si nete, 
Et mist au fere tel entente 
Qu'el fu si plesans et si gente 
Qu'ele sembloit estre aussi vive 
Cum la plus bele riens qui vive.

      See Chapter 5, note 125, and Chapter 6, pp. 196-198. [BACK]

24. See, for instance, Augustine Confessions 13.2.2:

Quid te promeruit materies corporalis, ut esset saltem invisibilis et incomposita . . .  quia non erat, promereri ut esset non poterat. Aut quid te promeruit inchoatio creaturae spiritalis, ut saltem tenebrosa fluitaret, similis abysso, tui dissimilis, nisi per idem Verbum converteretur ad idem, a quo facta est, atque ab eo illuminata lux fieret . . . ?"
(1948 521; emphasis added)

How did corporeal matter deserve from you that it might be even without form and void? since it was not, it could not deserve to be. Or how did the inchoate spiritual creature deserve from you to have even its fluid shadowy existence, similar to the abyss and different from you, unless it were turned by that same Word to the Same, by which it was made and, illuminated by him, became light?

For the thirteenth-century discussions of first matter, see Nardi 1960 69-101. [BACK]

25. In this view, cold is an effect of light just as warmth is. [BACK]

26. In Dante 1946 160: "rime tanto più astratte di quelle della sestina." [BACK]

27. It is a vital part of the plan of the petrose that, in addition to the rhymewords that end its stanzas, "Io son venuto" includes, often in rhyming position, most of the words that appear in the two sestinas as rhyme-words (in the following list, italics indicate that the word appears rhymed in "Io son venuto"): ombra (line 9), verde (30, 43; cf. "verdura," 45), freddo (21, 35; cf. "freddura," 61), tempo (31, 67), erba (42); closely related to colli is piagge (46), and to luce, "lucente" (5); cf. also the keywords "vertù" (41), "stagion forte" (45), "raggio" (5). One may remember the chiastic ordering of the rhyme-words of "Io son venuto": petra-marmo ( I-congedo ), donna-dolce (2-5), tempo-sempre (3-4); see Chapter 2, pp. 105-106. [BACK]

28. As Fenzi observed; see Chapter 2, note 3. [BACK]

29. See Introduction, pp. 37-45, on the theory of formation of stones. break [BACK]

30. One of the ideas Dante has in mind in comparing the poem to a crystal is certainly the fact that crystals served as burning glasses, whose traditional shape was not lenticular but spherical. The lapidaries know nothing of refraction or focus. The traditional idea, expressed by Isidore of Seville and repeated even by Albertus Magnus, was that crystal, when placed in the sun, emits fire: Albertus Magnus De mineralibus 2.2.3 (1890-99 5:32): "Hic (scil. cristallus) frigido oculo solis appositus ignem ejicit: sed si calidus sit, hoc perficere non potest" ("This, if placed cold in the eye of the sun, emits fire: but if it is warm it cannot do so" [Albertus Magnus 1967 83; Wyckoff's translation has been revised]).

      Isidore is clearly a direct source for Albertus; see Etymologiarum liber 16.13, PL 82:577: "Hic oppositus radiis solis adeo rapit flammam, ut aridis fungis, vel foliis ignem praebeat" ("This, placed in the rays of the sun, so seizes its fire that it extends fire to dry bark or leaves"). In the thirteenth century it was being realized that the shape of the glass was what focused the rays of the sun; among lapidaries, as far as we have been able to ascertain, the only one to mention the fact was the thirteenth-century Lapidario del rey D. Alfonso X.

      One of the basic ideas of "Amor, tu vedi ben," and perhaps one of the reasons for its being so cold, is that it is to be placed before the lady in the light, in the hope that it will be the one precious stone that can help him, that it will emit the fire that will ignite her heart; this is closely related to the ending of"Così nel mio parlar," in which the poem itself is made an arrow designed to strike the lady's heart.

      In another connection Dante closely associates the crystal emitting fire with the sun; see Paradiso 25.101-102: "Se Cancro avesse un tal cristallo, / l'inverno sarebbe un mese d'un sol di." See Chapter 6, pp. 250-255. [BACK]

31. See preceding note. [BACK]

32. See above, note 6. [BACK]

33. Paradiso 2.139-144, using luce as a verb, draws a parallel between the light of a heavenly body, which is attributed to the happiness of its angelic mover, and the light of gladness in the pupil of the human eye; the parallel depends, like Dante's use of luce in "Amor, tu vedi ben," on the idea that the eye emits light (see Chapter 6, pp. 228-232):

Virtù diversa fa diversa lega 
   col prezïoso corpo ch'ella avviva, 
   nel qual, sì come vita in voi, si lega. 
Per la natura lieta onde deriva, 
   la virtù mista per lo corpo luce 
   come letizia per pupilla viva. [BACK]

34. This was of course the term for the crystalline lens of the eye from as far back as Alexandrian times; Galen's notion of its function as the organ of sight properly speaking was the most widely echoed opinion in the Middle Ages. [BACK]

35. Spherical crystals have in many ages been treated as models of the cosmos as well. This may well have some connection with the fact that Aristotle and others compare the transparency of the celestial spheres to that of crystal; continue

      and crystalline heaven was the name given to the outermost sphere (see Enciclopedia dantesca, s.v. "cristallo"). An interesting example is discussed in Dumas 1982, on item no. 6 of Childeric's tomb, a "boule de crystal de roche diam. 45-46mm": "Des boules semblables dont le diamètre varie de 25 à 55 mm. ont été fréquemment découvertes dans les tombes tant d'hommes que de femmes, souvent montées en pendentifs formés de cercles d'or et surtout d'argent qui se croisent."

      The connection between crystals and the eye was particularly well established in literature; Dante almost certainly has in mind the passage in Guillaume de Lorris's portion of the Roman de la rose where the dreamer sees in the Fountain of Narcissus two crystals (implied to be round or at least rounded) that show him the contents of the Garden of Déduit (Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun 1974 79-80):

Ou fons de la fontainne aval 
Avoit deus pierres de cristal 
Qu'a grant entente remirai. 
Et une chose vos dirai 
Qu'a merveilles, ce croi, tendrés 
Maintenant que vous l'entendrés. 
Quant li solaus, qui tout aguiete 
Ses rais en la fontainne giete, 
Et la clartés aval descent, 
Lors perent colors plus de cent 
Es cristaus, car por le solel 
Deviennent jaunes et vermel. 
Si sont cil cristal merveilleus, 
Et tel force ont que tous li leus, 
Arbres et flors, et quanqu'aorne 
Li vergiers, i pert tous a ore. 
             (lines 1537-52)

      Dante does not take over any of the details of the passage; it is striking, in fact, that color—which Aristotle and Galen identify as the visible as such—is not mentioned in "Amor, tu vedi ben." While the idea of light, as well as its association with the notion that Love's arrow enters the heart via the eye, is a commonplace by Dante's time, to be sure, it had been given its most brilliant development by Guillaume de Lorris in this portion of the Roman de la rose; see Chapter 5, pp. 179-182, with notes. In this, as in many other respects, the rime petrose must be seen against the background of this important thirteenth-century masterpiece; see above, note 23. If "Amor, tu vedi ben," at one level of meaning, brings the statue of the lady to life, it involves as well a reference to the myth of Pygmalion ( Metamorphoses 19.243-297), used by Jean de Meun as the corrective to the example of Narcissus ( Roman de la rose, lines 20818-21194); the close association of the myths derives from Ovid. See Poirion 1970; also Chapter 5, pp. 196-197. [BACK]

36. See Chapter 2, pp. 96-106. [BACK]

37. The idea that the overarching atmosphere is like an eye looking at the continue

      heavens is not as outlandish as it may seem; indeed, it underlies the analogy between weeping and precipitation we have seen in "Io son venuto," "Amor, tu vedi ben," and the Roman de la rose. The analogy is familiar in architecture as well. The most famous monument of ancient Rome, for example, the Pantheon, has a hemispherical vault that is an analog both of the spherical cosmos itself and of the atmosphere. The oculus, as it is called, at the summit of the vault, is open to admit the moving rays of the sun: the building as a whole (whose spherical structural module is partly dissembled in the flat floor) is like a giant eyeball. Seen from above, the similarity is particularly striking. See the illustrations in de Fine Licht 1968 figs. 5 (p. 13) and 228 (p. 231); cf. fig. 206 (p. 203), of the Thermae Mercurii at Baiae; MacDonald 1976 figs. 15 (p. 23), 37 (p. 39), and 98 (p. 91). See Chapter 6, pp. 252-255. [BACK]

38. See, for instance, Augustine's famous discussion of frui and uti in De doctrina christiana 11 [BACK]

39. Contini glosses forte tempo as "aspra tempesta," which is of course a possible reading. We follow Foster and Boyde, whose interpretation seems preferable for the following reasons: (1) The possessive must indicate a special connection between the tempo and Love; the spring is peculiarly Love's own, "quando piove / amore in terra da tutti li cieli" ("Io son venuto," 67-68). (2) The threat of death in the springtime would be parallel with the ending of, again, "Io son venuto," and although petrifaction is not explicitly mentioned here, the theme is so important in "Amor, tu vedi ben" that it would have to be understood; this would, then, be a further reference to the theme of the Medusa. (3) A number of other parallels between "Io son venuto" and "Amor, tu vedi ben" and surrounding "Al poco giorno" as well are more specifically wintry. [BACK]

40. Cf. Boccaccio's used of the term tempo for "opportunity" in the Decameron; for example, 2.3.28 (1976114): "Idio ha mandato tempo a' miei desideri" ("God has provided an opportune time for the fulfillment of my desires"); 2.5.78 (1976 139): "preso tempo" ("seizing the opportunity"); 2.6.9 (1976 143): "attender tempo" ("wait for the favorable moment"). [BACK]

41. Aquinas Summa theologica Ia, quaest. 46, art. 3 (1875 1:342): "Quattuor enim ponuntur simul creata, scilicet coelum empyreum, materia corporalis, quae terrae intelligitur, tempus, et natura angelica" ("It is held that four things were created simultaneously, namely the empyrean heaven, corporeal matter, implied in the term earth, time, and the angels")—cf. Summa contra gentiles 1.15 (1875 12:20): "Omne quod incipit esse vel desinit, per motum vel mutationem hoc patitur . . . . [Deus] est . . . aeternus, carens principio et fine" ("Everything that begins to be or stops being does so through a motion or change . . . . [God] is . . . eternal, having neither beginning nor end").

      We must note how misleading is Contini's note to lines 49-50 (1946 164): "Amore è una vertù, dunque non propriamente una sostanza, e si è d'accordo con la Vita nuova (xxv.II)." The reference is to Dante's "Amore è uno accidente in substantia"; the notion of an accident that would precede time is selfcontradictory. But Dante's definition is in any case deliberately misleading (see below, notes 42 and 50). break [BACK]

42. In both "Amor, tu vedi ben" and the Vita nuova, Dante is thinking of the Pseudo-Dionysius's treatment of the names of God as naming superessential absolutes in which the creatures participate. Albertus Magnus writes:

 . . . est commune omnium istorum nominum de quibus in hoc libro agitur quod in Deo sunt res significatae per nomen essentialiter et per prius et ab ipso sunt in aliis sicut a causa effectiva et exemplari.
( Super Dionysium de divinis nominibus, art. 13, quaest. 1 ad 1 [quoted in Ruello 1963 103n.73])

. . . it is common to all those names which are discussed in this book that the things signified by the names are in God essentially and in a prior way and because of him they are in other things, he being their effective and exemplary cause.

      Aquinas explains:

Nullum nomen convenit Deo secundum illam rationem secundum quam dicitur de creaturis: nam sapientia in creaturis est qualitas, non autem in Deo . . . .  Quia omnis effectus non adaequans virtutem causae agentis recipit similitudinem agentis, non secundum eandem rationem, sed deficienter: ita ut quod divisum et multipliciter est in effectibus, in causa est simpliciter et eodem modo; sicut sol secundum unam suam virtutem multiformes et varias formas in istis inferioribus producit.
( Summa theologica Ia, quaest. 13, art. 5; Opera omnza 1.91; emphasis added)

No name belongs to God by the same principle by which it is said of creatures: for wisdom in creatures is a quality, but not in God . . . .  For every effect that is less than the power of the efficient cause receives the likeness of the agent, not according to the principle, but deficiently: so that what exists divided and in multiplicity in the effects, in the cause exists simply and according to one mode; just as the sun by its one power ( virtutem ) produces many and various forms in these lower creatures.

      See note 57 below. [BACK]

43. See also Origène 1976 24 (Rufinus's translation): "In hoc ergo principio, hoc est in Verbo suo Deus caelum et terram fecit, sicut et Evangelista Iohannes in initio Evangelii suo ait."

      The Gospel of John provides the principal biblical discussion of the Verbum Dei as the true light, giving Verbum Dei and Filius Dei as names of God, as well as Via, Veritas, and Vita; the first epistle of John provides two other equally famous names: Deus charitas est and Deus lux est (1 John 4:7-8). [BACK]

44. Cf. the Pseudo-Dionysius's De divinis nominibus, chap. 9: "motus Dei immobilis" (Aquinas 1950 315). [BACK]

45. Aristotle had defined time as "the measure of motion with respect to before and after" and had pointed out that motion, time, and space are notions that all imply each other ( Physics 3.1). These positions were widely adopted in the Middle Ages; Augustine alludes to them (e.g., Confessions 11.23), and Aqui- soft

      nas regularly cites them (e.g., 1875 22:381-383; cf. Summa theologica 1a, quaest. 66, art. 4). [BACK]

46. In this light, sixty-six as the number of lines in the poem, and six as the number of appearances of the dominant rhyme-word in each stanza, probably are to be associated with the traditional numerological identification of six as the number of the created world, as Petrarch seems to have understood; see Durling 1976 17-18. See also above, Chapter 3, pp. 122-126, and Appendix 2. In this connection, the number twelve is almost certainly associated with the months of the year, and five with the planets other than sun and moon. [BACK]

47. Bloch (1977 176-189) argues that the very nature of the canso is an appeal for judgment, usually from the lady as judge, against the lauzengier. Dante has transposed the appeal, making it one against the lady. See also Bloch 1977 144-160. [BACK]

48. "Amor, tu vedi ben" has several points of similarity with the canzone "Amor, che movi tua vertù da cielo" (usually associated with the pargoletta poems; mentioned twice in the De vulgari eloquentia, first [2.v.4] as an instance of the nobility of a hendecasyllable opening a canzone, later [2.xi.7] as having pedes longer than the sirma ). The parallel between the openings of the two poems ( Amor, followed by a pronoun and a second-person singular verb in the present tense) is symptomatic of a larger and more important parallel: both poems are extended apostrophes, prayers to Love to change the lady's heart, arranged in an overtly argumentative structure that is punctuated by the vocatives (in "Amor, che movi": "Amor, che movi . . . tu cacci . . . Dunque, segnor . . , guarda . . ."). In both poems, both the lover's love and the lady's beauty are represented as instances of the radiation of the cosmic principle of love ("Amor, che movi": "Feremi ne lo cor sempre tua luce," 16; and "perché nel suo venir li raggi tuoi, / con li quai mi risplende, / saliron tutti ne li occhi suoi," 28-30). But "Amor, che movi," extremely Guinizellian in metaphorics and tone, avoids the strong identification of Amor with the superessential Light that we find in "Amor, tu vedi ben"; only lines 1-2 clearly allude to it ("Amor, che movi tua vertù da cielo / come 'l sol lo splendore"). For the possible connections of this poem and "Io sento sì d'Amor la gran possanza" with the petrose, see Pernicone 1970a, 1970b.

      Another poem with insistent apostrophe of Amore is the much later canzone montanina "Amor, da che convien pur ch'io mi doglia" (see lines 1, 46, and 61), though this one is not argumentative but, instead, basically narrative in structure. [BACK]

49. The name Amore occurs once in each of the first three petrose ("Io son venuto," 50; "Al poco giorno," 16; "Amor, tu vedi ben," 1), and four times in "Così nel mio parlar" (lines 32, 37, 64, 72), where of course the personification becomes an actor in the internal drama (lines 35-52). See pp. 179-185. [BACK]

50. This process, whereby the god of love is replaced by-or gradually identified as-Christ, has an important parallel in the Vita nuova, where the figure of Love, originally a "segnore di pauroso aspetto" (chap. 3) and, until chapter 12, largely assimilated to the medieval Cupid, gradually blends into something close to the figure of Christ. In the culminating moment, Love himself draws an continue

      analogy between the pair Giovanna-Beatrice and the pair John the Baptist—Christ (Dante 1984 167-169):

parve che Amore mi parlasse nel cuore, e dicesse: "Quella prima è nominata Primavera solo per questa venuta d'oggi; ché io mossi lo imponitore del nome a chiamarla così Primavera, cioè prima verrà lo die che Beatrice si mosterrà dopo la imaginazione del suo fedele. E se anche vógli considerare lo primo nome suo, tanto è quanto a dire 'prima verrà,' però che lo suo nome Giovanna è da quello Giovanni lo quale precedette la verace luce, dicendo: 'Ego vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini."' Ed anche mi parve che mi dicesse, dopo, queste parole: "E chi volesse sottilmente considerare, quella Beatrice chiamerebbe Amore, per molta simiglianza che ha meco."

      The passage is evasive. Although it explicitly draws the parallel Giovanna-John the Baptist, identifying precedence as the tertium comparationis, it leaves implicit the parallel Beatrice-verace luce. Likewise, the final sentence does not fully state the analogy Beatrice-Christ; rather, it asserts the similarity between Beatrice and the Amore whose identity is in question. It is immediately after this chapter that Dante gives his misleading definition of love as "uno accidente in substantia," after which the figure Amore entirely disappears from the book (cf. Singleton 1949 73-75, 112-114). [BACK]

51. Since the poem as a whole is thus identified as a prayer to Christ, it implies that the speaker has not only the right to woo the lady but also a serious claim to her love; see Introduction, pp. 46-47. [BACK]

52. This is true, of course, in a very general sense; none of the technical terminology of emanationism is present, except for raggio. [BACK]

53. See above, note 6. Albertus Magnus writes:

Sicut lumen, quod est causa pulchri, per emissionem radiorum a causa efficit omnia luminosa, ita etiam secundum immisionem fulgoris a fonte pulcherrimi omnia pulchritudine participant.
(on De divinis nominibus 4; cited in De Bruyne 1946 3.185; emphasis added)

Just as the light, which is the cause of the beautiful, by the emission of rays from the source [the sun] makes everything luminous, so according to their reception of radiance from the fountain of the most beautiful all things participate in beauty.

      The passage quoted in note 6 above continues:

      . . .  et est principium omnium pulchrum, sicut effectiva causa, et movens tota, et continens amore propriae pulchritudinis, et finis omnium, sicut finalis causa (etenim pulchri causa omnia fiunt), et exemplaris, quoniam secundum ipsum cuncta determinantur, propter quod et idem est bono pulchrum quoniam bonum et pulchrum secundum omnem causam cuncta desiderant, et non est aliquid existentium quod non participet pulchro et bono. break

. . . and the beautiful is the beginning of all things, as their effective cause and mover, containing them within the love of its own beauty, as their final cause (for all things are made for the sake of beauty), and their formal cause, because all things are determined according to it, so that the beautiful is the same as the good, since all things desire the good and the beautiful in every cause, and there is nothing among existing things that does not participate in the beautiful and the good.

      De Bruyne (3: 266) quotes a characteristic comment from Albert's follower Ulrich of Strasburg:

Est etiam causa finalis, quia cum forma a perfectibili desideretur in quantum est perfectio, et haec perfectionis natura non est in forma nisi similitudo Lucis increatae, quae similitudo est pulchritudo rerum, patet quod forma desideratur et intenditur in quantum est bonum et etaim pulchrum. Et sic divina pulchritudo in se vel in sua similitudine est finis alliciens omne desiderium.
(emphasis added)

He is the final cause [of beauty], too, because as form is desired by the perfectible in so far as it is its perfection, and since the nature of this perfection in the form is nothing other than a likeness of the uncreated Light, it is clear that form is desired and intended in so far as it is both good and beautiful. And so the divine beauty, in itself or in what resembles it, is the goal that beckons to every desire.

54. It is especially through the idea of light as unifying and congregating ("congregating them to the one, true, clear, uniform cognition, and filling them with the one unifying light," De divinis nominibus 4.5.106-107) that the Pseudo-Dionysius (4.14.178) makes the transition to his discussion of love as a name of God, through a passage that returns to the idea of the Good as cause, container, and goal of all motion, from the natural harmonies of the universe to the mystical ecstasy of the saints (p. 146):

. . . sicut quidam aeternus cyclus, propter bonum ex bono in bono et ad bonum, in non errante convolutione circumambulans et in eodem et secundum idem et procedens et manens semper et restitutus.

. . . like a certain eternal cycle, because of the Good out of the Good in the Good to the Good circulating with a not errant circling, and in the Same and according to the Same both proceeding and remaining always and restored.

      See Chapter 5, note 99. [BACK]

55. See Chapter 1, pp. 55-62. [BACK]

56. Convivio 2.14.13: "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 consummazione del celestiale movimento" (Dante 1964); cf. Nardi 1949 316-317; Nardi 1967a 164. See also Litt 1963 242-243. [BACK]

57. See Burke 1961 33-38, 163-171. The term petra, of course, in one of its uses, stands in this poem for the other extreme; it is thus striking, in connection continue

      with this poem, that in discussing the names of God, Aquinas repeatedly uses the term lapis as an example of various aspects of the activity of naming. One of the most interesting instances is as follows:

In significatione nominum aliud est quandoque a quo imponitur nomen ad significandum, et aliud ad quod significandum nomen imponitur, sicut hoc nomen lapis imponitur ab eo quod laedit pedem, non tamen imponitur ad hoc significandum quod significat laedens pedem, sed ad significandam quamdam speciem corporum; alioquin omne laedens pedem esset lapis.
( Summa theologica Ia, quaest. 13, art. 2)

In the way names mean it often happens that there is a difference between the thing the name is taken from in order to signify, and the thing which the name is to signify, as the term lapis (stone) derives from harming the foot, but it is not used to order to signify "harming the foot" but to denote a certain class of bodies; otherwise everything that harms the foot would be a stone.

      Aquinas is drawing on Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum liber 16.3.1: "Lapis a terra tanquam densior, etiam vulgo discernitur. Lapis autem dictus, quod laedat pedem." When in stanza 2 of "Amor, tu vedi ben" Dante writes:

      he is engaging in etymological play; the "petra che t'avesse innoiato" must be a stone in the way. But "porto nascoso il colpo de la petra" also preserves the idea of the etymon of lapis: laedens, "harmful." [BACK]

58. We see a reflection here and in the Vita nuova of Aquinas's clarification of the Nominalist-Realist debate on the names of God in terms of a theory of analogical terms founded on the analogy of being, and specifically on the analogy of proportion with respect to potency and act (thus a change in emphasis from formalism to efficient cause ); see Montagnes 1963 esp. 81-96. [BACK]

59. See Introduction, pp. 11-18, and Chapter 1, p. 66-68. [BACK]

60. It is tempting to think that Dante had been struck by Albertus Magnus's phrase oculo solis, which does not appear in the sources of the De mineralibus, particularly because of the connection with the opening of the poem: "Amor [ = sol iustitiae ], tu vedi." We have noted, as important for helping to establish the analogy between the poem and the eye, the parallel between "lo tuo raggio che al volto mi luce" and "la novità che per tua forma luce," the first and last appearances of luce in the poem, both verbs. La novità is made parallel with lo tuo raggio. If we read novità with an eye to the meaning Dante assigns to the term novo in the Vita nuova (i.e., miracle), we may see in the last line of the poem that what Dante hopes is shining through its form is something he continue [BACK]