By the sacred trio of St. Peter, St. James, and St. John. ↩
Because his eyes were so blinded by the splendor of the beloved disciple. Speaking of St. John, Claudius, the German poet, says:—
“It delights me most of all to read in John: there is in him something so entirely wonderful—twilight and night, and through it the swiftly darting lightning—a soft evening cloud, and behind the cloud the broad full moon bodily; something so deeply, sadly pensive, so high, so full of anticipation, that one cannot have enough of it. In reading John it is always with me as though I saw him before me, lying on the bosom of his Master at the last supper: as though his angel were holding the light for me, and in certain passages would fall upon my neck and whisper something in mine ear. I am far from understanding all I read, but it often seems to me as if what John meant were floating before in the distance; and even when I look into a passage altogether dark, I have a foretaste of some great, glorious meaning, which I shall one day understand, and for this reason I grasp so eagerly after every new interpretation of the Gospel of John. Indeed, most of them only play upon the edge of the evening cloud, and the moon behind it has quiet rest.”
The Heaven of the Fixed Stars continued. St. John examines Dante on Charity, in the sense of Love, as in Milton, Paradise Lost, XII 583:—
“Love,
By name to come called Charity.”
Ananias, the disciple at Damascus, whose touch restored the sight of Saul. Acts 9:17:—
“And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house, and putting his hands on him, said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou earnest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales; and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.”
God is the beginning and end of all my love. ↩
The commentators differ as to which of the philosophers Dante here refers; whether to Aristotle, Plato, or Pythagoras. ↩
The angels. ↩
Exodus 33:19:—
“And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee.”
John 1:1:—
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, … full of grace and truth.”
By all the dictates of human reason and divine authority. ↩
In Christian art the eagle is the symbol of St. John, indicating his more fervid imagination and deeper insight into divine mysteries. Sometimes even the saint was represented with the head and feet of an eagle, and the hands and body of a man. ↩
All living creatures. ↩
Isaiah 6:3:—
“As one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
The soul of Adam. ↩
“Tell me, of what age was Adam when he was created?” is one of the questions in the Anglo-Saxon “Dialogue between Saturn and Solomon”; and the answer is, “I tell thee, he was thirty winters old.” And Buti says:—
“He was created of the age of thirty-three, or thereabout; and therefore the author says that Adam alone was created by God in perfect age and stature, and no other man.”
And Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, § 39:—
“Some divines count Adam thirty years old at his creation, because they suppose him created in the perfect age and stature of man.”
Stehelin, Traditions of the Jews, I 16, quotes Rabbi Eliezer as saying “that the first man reached from the earth to the firmament of heaven; but that, after he had sinned, God laid his hands on him and reduced him to a less size.” And Rabbi Salomon writes, that “when he lay down, his head was in the east and his feet in the west.” ↩
Parhelion is an imperfect image of the sun, formed by reflection in the clouds. All things are such faint reflections of the Creator; but he is the reflection of none of them.
Buti interprets the passage differently, giving to the word pareglio the meaning of ricettacolo, receptacle. ↩
In Limbo, longing for Paradise, where the only punishment is to live in desire, but without hope. Inferno IV 41:—
“Lost are we, and are only so far punished,
That without hope we live on in desire.”
Most of the Oriental languages claim the honor of being the language spoken by Adam in Paradise. Juan Bautista de Erro claims it for the Basque, or Vascongada. See Alphabet of Prim. Lang. of Spain, Pt. II Ch. 2, Erving’s Tr. ↩
See Canto XVI 79:—
“All things of yours have their mortality,
Even as yourselves.”
Dante, De Volgari Eloquio, I Ch. 4, says, speaking of Adam:—
“What was the first word he spake will, I doubt not, readily suggest itself to every one of sound mind as being what God is, namely, El, either in the way of question or of answer.”
The word used by Matthew 27:46, is Eli, and by Mark 15:34, Eloi, which Dante assumes to be of later
