distracted by the allurement of worldly things.

[4] The learned Doctor, Albertus Magnus.

[5] Gratian was an Italian Benedictine monk, who lived in
the 12th century, and compiled the famous work known
as the Decretum Gratiani, composed of texts of Scripture,
of the Canons of the Church, of Decretals of the Popes,
and of extracts from the Fathers, designed to show the
agreement of the civil and ecclesiastical law,--a work
pleasing in Paradise because promoting concord between
the two authorities.

[6] Peter Lombard, a theologian of the 12th century,
known as Magister Sententiarum, from his compilation of
extracts relating to the doctrines of the Church, under the
title of Sententiarum Libri IV. In the proem to his work he
says that he desired, "like the poor widow, to cast
something from his penury into the treasury of the Lord."

[7] Solomon.

[8] It was matter of debate whether Solomon was among
the blessed or the damned.

[9] "Lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding
heart; so that there was none like thee before thee,
neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee."--1 Kings,
iii. 12.

[10] Dionysius the Areopagite, the disciple of St. Paul
(Acts, xvii. 34), to whom was falsely ascribed a book of
great repute, written in the fourth century, " On the
Celestial Hierarchy."

[11] Paulus Orosius, who wrote his History against the
Pagans, at the request of St. Augustine, to defend
Christianity from the charge brought against it by the
Gentiles of being the source of the calamities which had
befallen the Roman world. His work might be regarded as
a supplement to St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei.

[12] Boethins, statesman and philosopher. whose work,
De Consolatione Philosophiae, was one of the books held in
highest esteem by Dante.

[13] Boethius, who was put to death in Pavia, in 524, was buried
in the church of S. Pietro in Ciel d' Oro--St. Peter's of the
Golden Ceiling.

[14] Isidore, bishop of Seville, died 636; the Venerable Bede,
died 735; Richard, prior of the Monastery of St. Victor, at
Paris, a mystic of the 12th century; all eminent theologians.

[15] Sigier of Brabant, who lectured, applying logic to questions
in theology, at Paris, in the 13th century, in the Rue du
Fouarre.


Then, as a horologe which calls us at the hour when the
Bride of God[1] rises to sing matins to her Bridegroom
that he may love her, in which the one part draws and
urges the other, sounding ting! ting! with such sweet
note that the well-disposed spirit swells with love, so saw
I the glorious wheel move, and render voice to voice in
concord and in sweetness which cannot be known save
there where joy becomes eternal.

[1] The Church.



CANTO XI. The Vanity of worldly desires,--St. Thomas Aquinas
undertakes to solve two doubts perplexing Dante.--He narrates the
life of St. Francis of Assisi.

O insensate care of mortals, how defective are those syllogisms
which make thee downward beat thy wings! One was going after the
Laws, and one after the Aphorisms,[1] and one following the
priesthood, and one to reign by force or by sophisms, and one to
rob, and one to civic business; one, involved in pleasure of the
flesh, was wearying himself, and one was giving himself to
idleness, when I, loosed from all these things, with Beatrice,
was thus gloriously received on high in Heaven.

[1] The Aphorisms of Hippocrates, meaning here, the study of
medicine.


When each[1] had returned unto that point of the circle at which
it was at first, it stayed, as a candle in a candlestick. And
within that light which first had spoken to me I heard, as
smiling it began, making itself more clear, "Even as I am
resplendent with its radiance, so, looking into the Eternal
Light, I apprehend whence thou drawest the occasion of thy
thoughts. Thou art perplexed, and hast the wish that my speech be
bolted again in language so open and so plain that it may be
level to thy sense, where just now I said, 'where well one
fattens,' and there where I said, 'the second has not been born;'
and here is need that one distinguish well.


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