[10] To procure suitors for her,

[11] When Caesar knocked at the door of Amyclas his voice caused
no alarm, because Poverty made the fisherman secure.--Lucan,
Pharsalia, V. 515 ff.

[12] In the hearts of those who behold them.

[13] The followers of Francis imitated him in going barefoot.

[14] The cord for their only girdle.

[15] Perhaps, because his father was neither noble nor famous.

[16] In or about 1210 Pope Innocent III. approved the Rule of St.
Francis.

[17] "The head of the fold:" a term of the Greek Church,
designating the head of one or more monasteries.

[18] In 1223, Honorius III. confirmed the sanction of the Order.

[19] Probably the Sultan of Egypt, at the time of the Fifth
Crusade, in 1219.

[20] To the harvest of good grain in Italy.

[21] Mount Alvernia.

[22] The Stigmata.

[23] St. Francis died in 1226.


"Think now of what sort was he,[1] who was a worthy colleague to
keep the bark of Peter on the deep sea to its right aim; and this
was our Patriarch:[2] wherefore thou canst see that whoever
follows him as he commands loads good merchandise. But his flock
has become so greedy of strange food that. it cannot but be
scattered over diverse meadows; and as his sheep, remote and
vagabond, go farther from him, the emptier of milk they return to
the fold. Truly there are some of them who fear the harm, and
keep close to the shepherd; but they are so few that little cloth
suffices for their cowls. Now if my words are not obscure, if thy
hearing has been attentive, if thou recallest to mind that which
I have said, thy wish will be content in part, because thou wilt
see the plant wherefrom they are hewn,[3] and thou wilt see how
the wearer of the thong reasons--'Where well one fattens if one
does not stray.'

[1] How holy he must have been.

[2] St. Dominic.

[3] The plant of which the words are splinters or chips; in other
terms, "thou wilt understand the whole ground of my assertion,
and thou wilt see what a Dominican, wearer of the leather thong
of the Order, means, when he says that the flock of Dominic
fatten, if they stray not from the road on which he leads them."



CANTO XII. Second circle of the spirits of wise religious men,
doctors of the Church and teachers.--St. Bonaventura narrates the
life of St. Dominic, and tells the names of those who form the
circle with him.

Soon as the blessed flame uttered the last word of its speech the
holy mill-stone[1] began to rotate, and had not wholly turned in
its gyration before another enclosed it with a circle, and
matched motion with motion, song with song; song which in those
sweet pipes so surpasses our Muses, our Sirens, as a primal
splendor that which it reflects.[2] As two bows parallel and of
like colors are turned across a thin cloud when Juno gives the
order to her handmaid[3] (the outer one born of that within,
after the manner of the speech of that wandering one[4] whom love
consumed, as the sun does vapors), and make the people here
presageful, because of the covenant which God established with
Noah concerning the world, that it is nevermore to be flooded; so
the two garlands of those sempiternal roses turned around us, and
so the outer responded to the inner. After the dance and the
other great festivity, alike of the singing and of the flaming,
light with light joyous and courteous, had become quiet together
at an instant and with one will (just as the eyes which must
needs together close and open to the pleasure that moves them),
from the heart of one of the new lights a voice proceeded, which
made me seem as the needle to the star in turning me to its place
and it began,[5] "The love which makes me beautiful draws me to
speak of the other leader by whom[6] so well has been spoken here
of mine. It is fit that where one is the other be led in, so that
as they served in war with one another, together likewise may
their glory shine.

[1] The garland of spirits encircling Beatrice and Dante.

[2] As an original ray is brighter than one reflected.

[3] Iris.

[4] Echo.


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