death.


"But in order that thou mayst bear away satisfied all thy wishes
which have been born in this sphere, it behoves me to proceed
still further. Thou wouldst know who is in this light, which
beside me here so sparkles, as a sunbeam on clear water. Now know
that therewithin Rahab[1] is at rest, and being joined with our
order it is sealed by her in the supreme degree. By this heaven
in which the shadow that your world makes comes to a point[2] she
was taken up before any other soul at the triumph of Christ. It
was well befitting to leave her in some heaven, as a palm of the
high victory which was won with the two hands,[3] because she
aided the first glory of Joshua within the Holy Land, which
little touches the memory of the Pope.

[1] "By faith the harlot Rabab perished not with them that
believed not."--Hebrews, xi. 31. See Joshua, ii. 1-21; vi. 17;
James, ii. 25.

[2] The conical shadow of the earth ended, according to Ptolemy,
at the heaven of Venus. Philalethes suggests that there may be
here an allegorical meaning, the shadow of the earth being shown
in feebleness of will, worldly ambition, and inordinate love,
which have allotted the souls who appear in these first heavens
to the lowest grades in Paradise.

[3] Nailed to the cross. The glory of Joshua was the winning of
the Holy Land for the inheritance of the children of Israel.


"Thy city, which is plant of him who first turned his back on his
Maker, and whose envy[1] has been so bewept, produces and
scatters the accursed flower[2] which has led astray the sheep
and the lambs, because it has made a wolf of the shepherd. For
this the Gospel and the great Doctors are deserted, and there is
study only of the Decretals,[3] as is apparent by their margins.
On this the Pope and the Cardinals are intent; their thoughts go
not to Nazareth, there where Gabriel spread his wings. But the
Vatican, and the other elect parts of Rome, which have been the
burial place for the soldiery that followed Peter, shall soon be
free from this adultery."[4]

[1] "Through envy of the devil came death into the world."--
Wisdom of Solomon, ii. 24.

[2] The lily on its florin.

[3] The books of the Ecclesiastical Law.

[4] By the removal in 1305 of the Papal Court to Avignon.



CANTO X. Ascent to the Sun.--Spirits of the wise, and the learned
in theology.--St. Thomas Aquinas.--He names to Dante those who
surround him.

Looking upon His Son with the Love which the one and the other
eternally breathe forth, the Primal and Ineffable Power made
everything which revolves through the mind or through space with
such order that he who contemplates it cannot be without taste of
Him.[1] Lift then thy sight, Reader, with me to the lofty wheels,
straight to that region where the one motion strikes on the
other;[2] and there begin to gaze with delight on the art of that
Master who within Himself so loves it that His eye never departs
from it. See how from that point the oblique circle which bears
the planets[3] branches off, to satisfy the world which calls on
them;[4] and if their road had not been bent, much virtue in the
heavens would be in vain, and well-nigh every potency dead here
below.[5] And if from the straight line its departure had been
more or less distant, much of the order of the world, both below
and above, would be defective. Now do thou remain, Reader, upon
thy bench,[6] following in thought that which is fore. tasted, if
thou wouldst be glad far sooner than weary. I have set before
thee; henceforth feed thee by thyself, for that theme whereof I
have been made scribe wrests all my care unto itself.

[1] All things, as well the spiritual and invisible objects of
the intelligence as the corporal and visible objects of sense,
were made by God the Father, operating through the Son, with the
love of the Holy Spirit, and made in such order that he who
contemplates the creation beholds the partial image of the
Creator.

[2] At the equinox, the season of Dante's journey, the sun in
Aries is at the intersection of the ecliptic and the equator of
the celestial sphere, and his apparent motion in his annual
revolution cuts the apparent diurnal motion of the fixed stars,
which is performed in circles parallel to the equator.

[3] The ecliptic.

[4] Which invokes their influence.

[5] Because on the obliquity of their path depends the variety of
their influence.

[6] As a scholar.



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