Authors: Dante
82–105.
This passage presents the life and accomplishments of Dominic, after his engendering and childhood (vv. 58–81), the ensemble paralleling that portion of the preceding canto dedicated to the life and works of Francis (XI.55–117).
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82–85.
Dominic’s honest religiosity is contrasted with the eye-on-the-prize sort of sham activities of two intellectuals, both of whom died within Dante’s lifetime. The first, Enrico di Susa, from Ostia (died in 1271), was a famous canon lawyer (and thus Dante fires another salvo at the venal practitioners of this profession), while Taddeo d’Alderotto (the probable reference is to him) was a Florentine (died in 1295) who studied and then taught medicine at Bologna. Dante mocks his translation of Aristotle’s
Ethics
in
Convivio
I.x.10. In these two men Dante pillories two kinds of false intellectual activity—religious law and Aristotelian science—both of which were of great importance to him.
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87.
The metaphorical vineyard (fairly obviously the Church) turns gray with rot if its keeper (obviously the pope) does not take good care of it. This reference to Boniface VIII is thinly veiled.
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88–96.
Carroll (comm. to vv. 46–105) paraphrases this elegant pastiche of a canon lawyer’s style as follows: “[Dominic] asked from the Head of the Church none of the evil privileges so eagerly sought for by others: to distribute only a third or a half of moneys left for charitable purposes, retaining the rest; to receive the first vacant benefice; or to use for himself the tithes which belong to God’s poor. His one request was for leave to fight against an erring world for the seed of the Faith.”
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88–90.
Bonaventure, here most assuredly Dante’s mouthpiece, distinguishes between the papacy, in its design supportive of the poor, and the pope (the hated Boniface VIII in 1300), ignoring that design.
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91–93.
These three corrupt practices all reveal the avarice of prelates, the first and third involving theft of monies destined for the poor, the second, advancement in ecclesiastical position. For this last, see Tozer (comm. to this tercet): “The reference is to the
expectationes
, or nominations to posts not yet vacant that popes of the day were pleased to make.” Obviously, none of these self-aggrandizing activities had as their goal support for the benevolent tasks that customarily fell to the Church.
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93.
The Latin (“the tenth part that belongs to the poor,” the tax collected by the clergy) refers to the tithe, the 10 percent of a parishioner’s income that the Church collected in order to help feed and clothe the poor. Not even this was safe from predatory clergy, who took these funds for their own use.
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95.
See Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse): Dominic’s request for approval of his order was made to Pope Innocent III in 1215, and approved only in late 1216 by Pope Honorius III, the newly elected pope (the Church had for a time prohibited the formation of new orders). However, in 1205, Dominic had gone to Rome, seeking permission to wage a campaign against heretics, which was granted. Between 1207 and 1214 he was part of the eventually bloody attempt to bring the Albigensian Cathars back into the fold, alongside of Folco di Marsiglia (see the notes to
Par.
IX.40 and to
Par.
IX.94). Bosco/Reggio try to keep Dominic’s hands free of Albigensian blood, saying that on the day of the terrible battle of Muret (12 September 1213), Dominic was at prayer in a church. However, given the poet’s praise of Folco, who was the leader of that crusade (if Simon de Montfort was in charge of the army at that particular battle), he may have imagined a Dominic as warlike as his Folco.
See vv. 97–102, where Dominic’s forcefulness in combating heresy is applauded.
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96.
This indication reminds us of the precise balance in the two circles of saints that we have seen in these two cantos, each containing twelve souls.
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97–102.
While the militarism of Dominic’s order may be metaphorical, referring to his preaching, that his “career” began with a literal war, the crusade against the Albigensians, certainly colors these lines, whatever Dante’s intention.
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98.
Dominic fought against heresy with the support of Pope Honorius III, who had approved his request to found a new order. However, he had also had the approval of Pope Innocent III to subdue the Albigensians and bring them back to the fold (see the note to verse 95). In that effort, the crusaders’ military force was more than metaphoric.
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101–102.
The “resistance was most stubborn” in Provence, with the Albigensian Cathars. This detail again tends to erode the distinction between Dominic the Christian debater and Dominic the Christian soldier. See the note to vv. 97–102.
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103–105.
Raoul Manselli (Mans.1973.1), p. 118, characterizes this tercet, moving from Dominic’s day into Dante’s, with the order burgeoning with new chapters, as setting a tranquil conclusion to a story that began with military roughness. One might add that it has hardly moderated its tone until now.
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106–111.
These verses offer a kind of summary of both saints’ lives. The resulting image, the two wheels of a chariot of war, already deployed in the earthly paradise (introduced at
Purg.
XXIX.107 and on the scene until
Purg.
XXXII.147), is perhaps remembered in the final verses of the poem.
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112–113.
Here begins the denunciation of the current Franciscan Order (cf. the similar attack on the wayward Dominicans,
Par.
XI.118–123). Where in the last canto the image of Thomas’s order was a merchant ship, here that founded by Francis is presented as a chariot of war. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses) complain that, after the fresh and convincing images of the last canto, some of those encountered in this one, beginning
with these chariot wheels, seem forced. Here Dominic is compared to the rim of a wheel that leaves a clear imprint in the earth, while his followers do no such thing.
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114.
Abruptly switching semantic fields, Bonaventure compares the good old days of Francis’s leadership and the current condition of the order to wine casks: Good wine leaves crust in the barrel it was contained in, while bad wine leaves mold.
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115–117.
The faltering order is depicted as reversing its track; see the parallel moment in Thomas’s denunciation of the Dominicans (
Par.
XI.124–132), portrayed as sheep wandering astray, away from the Rule, in search of new nourishment.
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117.
There is agreement among the commentators about the difficulty of making exact sense of this verse. We have not attempted to do more than give its obvious general meaning, though it happens that we are in fairly close agreement with the gloss of Daniele Mattalia to this tercet, who takes issue with some of the more strained attempts to make sense of this line, that is, the understanding, begun with Michele Barbi (Barb.1934.1, p. 287), that the Franciscan backsliders retrogress while facing forward, moving their front foot back toward (and then behind?) the other. Even if Dominic has been described as “the holy athlete” (verse 56), that way of retrogression seems to require muscular skills and patience well beyond those of most corrupt barefoot friars. Momigliano (comm. to vv. 115–117) justly complains that this line seems forced and lays some of the blame for that on the verb form
gitta
(lit. “throws”), forced by rhyme.
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118–120.
The obvious Scriptural allusion (to Matthew 13:24–30, the parable of the wheat and the tares) somehow seems to have escaped the earliest commentators. It appears first in Landino (comm. to these verses) and then is repeated in almost all subsequent comments. The reference of the tercet is a cause of some debate. See Manselli, “francescanesimo,”
ED
III (1971), pp. 115–16; his view is that the word “loglio” (tares) does not refer to the Spiritual Franciscans, as some believe, but to all corrupt members of the order, whatever their leaning in the controversy between Spirituals and Conventuals.
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122.
The word
volume
(volume), occurring first in
Inferno
I.84 and last in
Paradiso
XXXIII. 86, literally runs from one end of the poem to the other. It
occurs nine times and always either refers to God’s book (the Scriptures) or to his “other book,” the created universe (except in its first use, where it refers to the
Aeneid
[see the note to
Inf.
I.84]). Thus, to refer to the slender booklet, the Rule of the Franciscan Order, as a
volume
is to employ a heavy word.
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124–126.
Cosmo (Cosm.1936.1), pp. 149–54, contrasts the inner tension among the Franciscan ranks with the struggles that afflicted Dominic’s order, shaped by external enemies. For a study locating Francis, as Dante does here, in the middle, see Stanislao da Campagnola (Daca.1983.1); and for his indebtedness to Ubertino’s very words for his characterizations of Francis (
seraphicus
) and Dominic (
cherubicus
), see p. 182n. See also Manselli (Mans.1982.1) for an overview of Dante’s response to the Spiritual Franciscans, with many bibliographical indications in the notes. Mario Trovato (Trov.1995.1), p. 168, on the additional basis of his interpretation of
Paradiso
XI.109–114, lends his support to Manselli’s position. And for what has been the standard view of the tension among the Conventual and Spiritual Franciscans themselves (at least after Manselli’s work), see Manselli (Mans.1982.1), pp. 57–58: Matteo d’Acquasparta is criticized for loosening the strictures of the Rule of the order, while Ubertino da Casale is seen as being too rigid in his adherence to the founder’s insistence on the importance of poverty in a true Christian life.
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125.
We have translated “la scrittura” in the narrowest sense (“the Rule”). In Dante’s Italian the word has meant both writing in general and, on some occasions, the Bible. Here it is a third form of writing, something more than ordinary words and to be taken as postbiblical, but having a similar authority. (See the note to verse 122 for the similar status of the noun
volume
.) Aversano (Aver.1984.2), pp. 23–24, points out that Francis was so concerned that his Rule would be fraudulently emended that he encouraged his friars to memorize it.
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127–141.
For a helpful discussion of the participants of this second circle of souls found in the heaven of the Sun, see Di Biase (Dibi.1992.1), pp. 71–83. Comparing the two circles, Cosmo (Cosm.1936.1), pp. 106–7, argues that there is no sense of rigid separation between the two, rather, in fact, that there are many similarities between them.
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127–128.
“St. Bonaventura was born at Bagnoregio (now Bagnorea) near Orvieto in 1221, the year of St. Dominic’s death. As a child he was attacked by a dangerous disease, which was miraculously cured by St. Francis of
Assisi. When the latter heard that the child had recovered he is said to have exclaimed ‘buona ventura,’ whereupon the boy’s mother changed his name to Bonaventura. In 1238 or 1243 he entered the Franciscan order. After studying in Paris under Alexander of Hales, he became successively professor of philosophy and theology, and in 1257 was made doctor. Having risen to be general of the Franciscan order (in 1257), he was offered the archbishopric of Albano by Gregory X, whom he accompanied to the second Council of Lyons, where he died, July 15,1274, ‘his magnificent funeral being attended by a pope, an emperor, and a king.’ St. Bonaventura was canonized in 1482 by Sixtus IV, and placed among the doctors of the Church, with the title of
Doctor Seraphicus
, by Sixtus V” (T). The word
vita
, used here by Bonaventure to identify himself as a soul in grace, is used with this sense for the second time in the poem (see the note to
Par.
IX.7).
For Dante’s debt to mysticism, as focused for him in the writings of Bonaventure, see Meekins (Meek.1997.1). For the possibility that Dante read the apparent contradictions between the positions of Aquinas and Bonaventure syncretistically, see Mazzotta (Mazz.2003.1) and Gragnolati (Grag.2005.1), pp. 58–77. Di Somma (Diso.1986.1), p. 50n., argues for the central importance of Bonaventure’s
Itinerarium mentis in Deum
for all of Dante’s poem, not only for this canto. A survey of Bonaventure’s presence in the Dartmouth Dante Project reveals that the vast majority of references to “Bonaventura” before the end of the nineteenth century occur only in notes to this canto, in which he is a named (and thus inescapable) presence. Thus we realize, after a few minutes of searching, that a serious use of Bonaventure’s texts as a guide to Dante is a fairly recent development. In fact, it is only in Scartazzini’s commentary that one finds a total of more references to him in all the other cantos than one finds to him in this one. After Scartazzini, that situation begins to change. (English readers will find that in this particular, as well as in others, John Carroll outstrips his competitors.) See Hagman (Hagm.1988.1) for a study of Bonaventure’s extensive and overall importance to Dante. But see Sofia Vanni Rovighi, “Bonaventura da Bagnoreggio, santo,”
ED
I (1970), p. 673, arguing that attempts to show a direct textual dependence of Dante on Bonaventure have had only dubious results; all one can say is that his work (the
Itinerarium mentis in Deum
in particular) is a generic model for the outline of the
Comedy
, without being able to make more of a claim for it than that.
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