Like the other tenth canti, this one marks the crossing of a borderline (in Inferno it separated the sins of Incontinence from the walls of the City of Dis, enclosing the sins of the hardened will; in Purgatorio, Ante-purgatory from Purgatory proper). The first of these is fairly indistinctly marked; the next is more formally established. But this one is as though a double line had been drawn across the space separating Canto IX from Canto X, separating the planets attained by the earth's shadow from those, beginning with the Sun, that are free of such darkening. None of the souls we will meet from now on suffered from the human weakness that we found among those who lacked a vigorous faith, or those who placed too much hope in the things of this world, or those who failed to understand the nature of true love (for the program of the defective Theological Virtues in the first three heavens of Paradiso, see the note to Par. III.47-48; and see Andreoli [comm. to Par. III.16]: “The fact is that it is only in the fourth heaven that we shall begin to find souls who are completely beyond reproach”).

On this opening, see Fiorenzo Forti (“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso,” dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968]), p. 352: After the several references in the last canto to human strife, Dante now turns to “celestial harmony instead of earthly disorder.” Forti later says (p. 380) that the celestial Athens (see Conv. III.xiv.15) is the point at which we have now arrived. For the mistaken notion that these opening lines constitute an “invocation,” see Gary Cestaro (“Paradiso X,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], p. 148): “ ...this opening contemplation of the Trinity, and of spiratio in particular, amounts to no less than a new invocatio.”

These six verses might be paraphrased: “God the Father (the Power), gazing on His Son (Wisdom) with the Holy Spirit (Love) that breathes forth eternally from both Father and Son, created all things that revolve above, whether in angelic consciousness or in the sphere that they govern (e.g., that ruled by the Principalities, Venus), with the result that anyone who (as Dante now is doing) contemplates the Father's Power cannot fail to savor it.”

Angela Meekins (“Reflecting on the Divine: Notes on Dante's Heaven of the Sun,” The Italianist 18 [1998]: 28-70) has written a study of the heaven of the Sun that deals in an orderly way with the main subjects of these four and a half cantos: the Trinity; the theologies of Thomas and of Bonaventure; the order and imagery of this heaven; its mirror motif; its unity and difference as they variously apply to the souls whom we meet in the Sun; its mysticism and poetry; and, finally, its representation of the mind's road to God.

Eileen Sweeney (“Aquinas' Three Levels of Divine Predication in Dante's Paradiso,” Comitatus 16 [1985]: 29-45) argues that, beginning in the heaven of the Sun, Dante has programmatic recourse to Aquinas's three levels of human predication of the qualities of God, affirmative (e.g., one may say that God is wise), negative (God is wise, but not as humans are wise), supereminent (God is wise, but His wisdom cannot be expressed in human language).

Dante seizes the opportunity to underline his adherence to orthodox doctrine: the Holy Spirit breathes forth from both the Father and the Son. See Carroll (comm. to vv.1-6).

These lines have caused difficulty. Where some have thought the references are to thoughts of things and things themselves in the created universe, most contemporary readers (perhaps following Fiorenzo Forti [“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso,” dir. M. Marcazzan {Florence: Le Monnier, 1968}], p. 353) think the references are to angelic Intelligences (the nine orders of angels) and to the things impelled by them (the heavens with their planets).

This verse initiates the theme of ingestion in the canto, a part of the metaphor of eating first deployed as a governing trope by Dante in Convivio. It has a perhaps surprising presence in this canto that, in light of its higher interests, might seem an inappropriate place for such concerns. See also vv. 23 (“tasted”), 25 (“feed yourself”), 88 (“thirst” for “wine”), 96 (“where sheep are fattened”).

This is the third address to the reader in Paradiso (see also Par. II.10-18 and V.109-114) and is in fact triple, with three imperatives, each in the first line of a tercet, marking its triune shape, which breaks a single action into three moments, matching the opening Trinitarian proem of the canto (vv. 1-6), with the reader being asked first to elevate his or her sight (verse 7), then to begin to gaze (verse 10), and finally to perceive (13). [Note revised 24 August 2013; see the revised note to Par. IX.10-12.]

“The heavenly bodies have two opposing movements: the one, daily (or equatorial), from east to west in the plane of the Equator, the other, annual (or zodiacal), from west to east in the plane of the ecliptic” (Bosco/Reggio, comm. to vv. 8-9). Dante is referring to the point where the Sun in the plane of ecliptic, which is tilted so as to intersect the equatorial plane at an angle of 23.5 degrees (see Conv. III.v.14), crosses the Equator at the spring and fall equinox. In the spring, the Sun is in Aries, as we have seen (e.g., in Inf. I.37-40). On March 21 and September 21 there are twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness everywhere on the globe. Unfortunately for Dante, reality did not collaborate with his ideal star chart, on which the spring equinox would have occurred on March 25, thus on the very day his descent into Hell began; however, he does manage to refer to it in such a way as to allow the reader to think of it as at least roughly contemporaneous with the beginning of the journey. For Dante's previous exposition of this equinoctial matter, see Convivio III.v.13.

God, apparently an aesthetician, loves contemplating His own work, just as the reader is encouraged to do as well. Barely out of sight in this tercet is Dante the maker, contemplating his own God-bearing poem with wonder and delight.

See Tozer (comm. to vv. 16-18) for the following paraphrase and explanation: “'and if their path (the zodiac) were not inflected (i.e., oblique), much influence in Heaven would be fruitless, and almost every agency on earth below would fail.' It is the obliquity of the zodiac which causes the changes of the seasons; without it the sun could not produce the effect for which it was designed, and such agencies as those which originate life and growth in plants and animals, movement in winds and streams, changes of temperature, and the like, would no longer exist.” And see Carroll (comm. to vv. 7-27).

There is some dispute as to whether this is a distinct address to the reader or a continuation of that found in vv. 7-15. However, even Scartazzini, who undercounts the occurrences of the phenomenon in the poem (see the note to Par. XXII.106-111), believes this represents a second, separate address. Because they are rhetorically separate entities (“Leva dunque, lettore, ...” and “Or ti riman, lettor, ...”) and enjoy temporal separation (the reader is asked three times to look along with Dante up at the circling heavens, and then to think upon what he or she has seen, unaided by the poet, who now must return to his narrative), one does not find an easy objection to consider them as being in fact more than one, the first of which is indeed tripartite (“Leva,” “comincia,” and “Vedi” [vv. 7, 10, and 13]) and the second single. Perhaps because the other eightteen addresses to the reader (see the note to Inf. VIII.94-96) are all single, this double one has caused some to consider it, too, single; that is probably not reason enough. It may be difficult to believe that Dante would have designed the poem with seven addresses to the reader in each of the first two cantiche and only six in the third. This reader's inability to do exactly that was the cause of his miscounting of the addresses to the reader in the first version of these notes. [This part of this note revised 24 August 2013; see the revised note to Par. IX.10-12.]

See Gabriele Muresu (“Le 'corone' della vera sapienza [Paradiso X],” in his Tra gli adepti di Sodoma. Saggi di semantica dantesca [terza serie] [Rome: Bulzoni, 2002], pp. 282-84) and Luca Curti (“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 147-48), for the closeness of the images of the “feast of knowledge” found here and in Convivio (III.v.20-22). Some thirty-seven years ago, in 1968, when he was a graduate student at Princeton, Prof. Robin McCallister made the suggestion that perhaps we should look upon the Paradiso as in fact the completion of the abandoned Convivio, now properly corrected. The controlling element in this central metaphor of these two terzine moves from a scholar's bench (verse 22), on which we readers sit, listening to Dante's lecture, to (in verse 25) a seat at a banquet, at which chef Dante is preparing the meal, a “feast of knowledge” indeed. He does, however, beg off from serving us, leaving us to do that for ourselves, since he must attend to continuing his narrative.

For the interesting verb, prelibare, appearing here for the first time in the poem, see the note to Paradiso XIV.4.

A hapax, the Latinism scriba, rhyming with two other Latinisms, preliba (tasted [and not yet swallowed]) and ti ciba (feed yourself), is one of the key words in Dante's self-presentation as veracious author, which occupies a privileged space here, the last line of one of the longest introductory passages to a canto in this poem at the point where it has reached the first stage of its destination, what we might refer to as “God's country.” Poletto (comm. to vv. 25-27) points to the apt phrase in Monarchia II.x.6, where Luke is referred to as the scribe of Christ (... “Cristus, ut scriba eius Lucas testatur”); see also Torraca (comm. to vv. 22-27), indicating the same passage. And see Gian Roberto Sarolli, “Dante scriba Dei” (in his Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1971], pp. 189-336, and the note to Paradiso V.85. For a meditation on this verse as encapsulating Dante's self-presentation as scribe throughout the poem, see Angelo Jacomuzzi (“'Ond'io son fatto scriba,'” in his L'imago al cerchio. Invenzione e visione nella “Divina Commedia” [Milan: Silva, 1968], pp. 29-100). And see Minnis (Medieval Theory of Authorsip: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages [London: Scolar, 1984]), p. 94, citing St. Bonaventure (near the end of his prologue to the Books of Sentences of Peter Lombard). Considering the latter's role in that undertaking, Bonaventure says this: “The method of making a book is fourfold. For someone writes the materials of others, adding or changing nothing, and this person is said to be merely the scribe. Someone else writes the materials of others, adding, but nothing of his own, and this person is said to be the compiler. Someone else writes both the materials of other men, and of his own, but the materials of others as the principal materials, and his own annexed for the purpose of clarifying them, and this person is said to be the commentator, not the author. Someone else writes both his own materials and those of others, but his own as the principal materials, and the materials of others annexed for the purpose of confirming his own, and such must be called the author.” Dante's claim here, to be merely the “scribe” of God, in Bonaventure's scheme the least of writers, is at once part of the topos of modesty and a shattering denial of it, since Dante's “mere scribal” activity lifts him to the level of the authors of Scripture, including the Solomon whom we will see in this very canto.

The ascent to the Sun, we are perhaps surprised to discover, has not until now been accomplished. We must surmise that the view of the heavens purveyed in vv. 1-27 derives from what Dante saw looking up from the planet Venus. His movement up from there, as is Beatrice's guidance while leading him up, seems instantaneous, seems not to occur in time. Cf. the earlier insistence on the sense of the ascent to a higher sphere without awareness of time in Paradiso I.91-93; V.91-93; and VIII.13.

The Sun is seen as redirecting God's beneficial gifts (e.g., the warmth that causes vegetative growth) down to earth, as well as, while everlasting itself, giving us, who live here, our main means of telling time.

This “point,” to which the poet has referred (in verse 9), is in the constellation Aries.

For this motion, see Dante's description of the diurnal movement of the Sun in Convivio III.v.14, “rising upward like the screw of a [n olive] press” (tr. R. Lansing). The spring ushers in the lengthening sunlight of early summer (21 March to 21 June), which begins to subside only after the summer solstice.

Grandgent (comm. to vv. 35-36) cites A. Fazzi (GSLI, vol. 73, p. 112), making the distinction between an uncaused, spontaneous thought, which is what Dante is describing here, and the sort of thought he had referred to earlier (Inf. XXIII.10-11): “Just as one thought issues from another, / so, from the first, another now was born.”

Beatrice is described in terms that recall Convivio I.ii.14, describing the life of St. Augustine: “... the progress of his life, which proceeded from bad to good, good to better, and better to best” (tr. R. Lansing).

Vincenzo Placella (“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Neapolitana: “Paradiso,” ed. P. Giannantonio [Naples: Loffredo, 2000 {1987}], p. 222) follows Petrocchi in thinking that this effulgence is not that emanating from Beatrice (as most early commentators believed, perhaps encouraged by her presence in the preceding terzina), but of the souls in the Sun, who are so bright that they outshine even that brightest of all celestial bodies. For a fairly early instance (ca. 1791) of the current majority sense of this tercet, see Lombardi (comm. to vv. 40-45), citing the prophet Daniel, whose final vision (Daniel 12:3) portrays the wise as shining with the brightness of the sun. Rebecca Beal (“Beatrice in the Sun: A Vision from Apocalypse,” Dante Studies 103 [1985]: 63), as part of her project to read Beatrice surrounded by the twelve souls (who also surround Dante, we should remember) as the “woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” of Apocalypse 12:1, i.e., as Ecclesia, the Church. However, the next verse (Apoc. 12:2) tells us that this woman is pregnant, which hardly works out in Beal's equation, and so, like the moon beneath her feet, is allowed the silent treatment. Returning to this biblical text and its relationship to the heaven of the Sun, Beal (“Bonaventure, Dante, and the Apocalyptic Woman Clothed with the Sun,” Dante Studies 114 [1996]: 211), now intent on demonstrating Bonaventure's conspicuous interest in “the woman clothed with the sun” in his sermons, notes that while, in two of them, he does indeed refer to her as Ecclesia, he far more often considers her as a representation of Mary (as her pregnant condition invites the reader to surmise). And thus Beal argues that her valence changes once we leave the tenth canto behind.

The brightness that Dante saw in these souls, which made them stand out from the Sun, not by being a different color, but by being even brighter than the brightest thing known to our mortal vision, simply cannot be described by the poet, outdone by God's art, as it were. For discussion of this contrast in these lines between Dante's limited ability as artist in comparison to God's, see Teodolinda Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992], pp. 196-97).

Dante refers to those who show themselves in the Sun, the fourth of the planets, as the “fourth family”; God makes them happy by demonstrating his other two Trinitarian aspects, Wisdom (manifest in the Son) and Love (present in the Holy Spirit). See the opening of this canto, vv. 1-3.

If the preceding six verses described Dante's inability to portray the brightness of God's creatures, this tercet proclaims God's “art” in demonstrating His triune nature.

Beatrice plays with one of the most present medieval metaphors, the Sun as representing God (see Conv. III.xii.7), the “sun” of the angels, his “planets” in the Empyrean, who has raised Dante to the height of this heaven, home of the physical sun.

Discussing these lines, Luca Curti (“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 150-52), paraphrases them as follows: “... my mind, so concentrated on God that Beatrice was eclipsed and forgotten, divided His splendor into many things, so that I saw many splendors sparkling” (p. 151). As opposed to his “forgetting” of Beatrice while he was still on earth, looked back upon with horror in Purgatorio XXX and XXXI, this forgetful behavior is laudable, as, in the next tercet, Beatrice's own reaction indicates.

Beatrice's delighted smile at being forgotten in favor of God brings Dante's attention back to her and, surely we are meant to understand, to the souls in the Sun. Albert Rossi, while a graduate student at Princeton some twenty-five years ago, suggested that the phrase “li occhi suoi ridenti” (verse 62) reflected a passage in Convivio (III.xv.2): “The text [of the canzone Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona] says then that 'in her face there appear things which manifest some part of the joy of Paradise,' and it identifies the place where it appears, namely her eyes and her smile [st. iv, vv. 1-3]. Here it is necessary to know that the eyes of wisdom are her demonstrations, by which truth is seen with the greatest certainty, and her smiles are her persuasions, in which the inner light of wisdom is revealed behind a kind of veil; and in each of them is felt the highest joy of blessedness, which is the greatest good of Paradise” [tr. R. Lansing].

The souls in the Sun make Beatrice and Dante the center of their circle (“crown”) just as the halo around the Moon (dwelling of the former huntress, Diana) is formed by the vapor in our atmosphere that attaches “cloth” to the “belt” of Latona's daughter.

In the Empyrean (la corte del cielo), whence Dante has returned, there are jewels (the saints and/or the angels?) so precious that they may not be removed from the kingdom (resolved from metaphor, be described here on earth), and it was of them that these souls in the Sun sang. In this canto we are given less indication than in any we have read (in which the souls are making musical tribute) about what exactly the souls were singing; eventually we learn that the conjoined choruses of the two groups of twelve theologians are singing of the Incarnation (Par. XIII.27) and of the Trinity (Par. XIII.26; XIV.28-31), as Carroll has pointed out (comm. to vv. 70-93). One who does not put wings on himself (Icarus-like?), as Dante has, to fly up to see these “jewels” might as well await word about them from the dumb. One has to see for oneself, apparently (since not even Dante is telling), that is, take the trip through the heavens that, as far as we learn, only Paul and Dante were privileged to enjoy while still in this life.

A question remains unanswered in the commentaries. Are the singing souls, clearly presented as being situated in the Sun, distinguished from the “jewels,” about whom they are singing and who are in the Empyrean, or are they counted among their companions here in the Sun? While many commentators cite Inferno II.125 for the phrase corte del cielo, no one seems to be bothered by the fact that it there clearly refers to the Empyrean, specifically referring to Mary, Lucy, Rachel, and Beatrice. It seems necessary to understand that the twelve theologians are singing of exalted “colleagues” whom they have temporarily left behind them in the Empyrean, for instance, the Virgin Mary, possibly St. Francis himself, and other “stars” of the afterlife, too precious to be sent below for Dante's instruction or to be identified by their descending colleagues in beatitude. The passage often makes little sense if it is read as referring to anything but the Empyrean: e.g., verse 70: the present tense of Dante's returning to earth would seem to put that as happening after the final vision in the Empyrean, i.e., now in the writer's personal history; verses 71-72: the present tenses of the verbs describing the state of the “jewels” contrast with the past tenses used to describe the actions of the souls of the wise men in the Sun; verse 73: “these” (quei lumi) souls in the Sun are distinguished from “those” (quelle gioe) of whom they sing.

To explain the mercantile reference in this passage Torraca (comm. to vv. 70-73) refers to Marco Polo's Il milione (XXV, LXXIX), where the traveler reports that the Great Khan would not allow rubies (see Par. IX.69 and note), in the first case, or pearls, in the second, to leave his kingdom in order to protect their value, not letting them become common by allowing their export. For Portirelli's views on Dante's knowledge of Marco Polo's voyage, see the note to Purgatorio I.22-24.

After the “suns” in the Sun had circled Dante and Beatrice three times, like the stars that circle the poles, they seemed to Dante to resemble ladies in the dance who pause, awaiting the resumption of singing in order to continue with their dance steps. See the description of the practice of ladies who danced to the singing of ballate in Dante's time in Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 79).

For a meditation on this canto that takes its departure from these lines, see John Freccero, “The Dance of the Stars” (1968), in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion (Cambridge: Harvard, 1986?), pp. 221-44.

For a different version of this image, see Purgatorio VIII.86-87, where Dante's eyes move toward the heavens, “to that zone where the stars move slowest, / as does the spoke of a wheel close to the axle.”

Thomas's first word, “Quando,” is matched only by one other speaker's first word similarly occupying the last place in its line, that uttered by Ulysses (Inf. XXVI.90). Where Ulysses has epic pretensions in his self-narrative (see the note to Inf. XXVI.90-93), Thomas, another kind of “hero,” one who indeed vigorously pursued virtue and knowledge (and not merely in what we might regard as an advertisement for himself) is a foil to prideful Ulysses. The Greek adventurer's pride is matched by Thomas's humility (his name occurs only after he finishes the eighteen-line introductory portion of his speech and then only after he has named his teacher. Can anyone imagine Ulysses referring to someone who had been his teacher?). Beatrice does begin one of her speeches with “Quando” at the end of a line (Purg. XXXI.67), but this is hardly her first speech in the poem nor even the beginning of a new speech; indeed, it is part of her long accusation of Dante for his backsliding after her death. Thomas's first self-description (vv. 94-96) intrinsically suggests that he is dramatically different from Ulysses, who in his pursuit of knowledge had companions whom he treated as the mere instruments of his own adventure and whom he destroyed along with himself; Thomas, on the other hand, “... was a lamb among the holy flock / led by Dominic along the road / where sheep are fattened if they do not stray.” That last word (vaneggia) surely has a kinship with Ulysses, whose wandering brings him under the spell of the Siren (at least according to Dante: see Purg. XIX.19-24). What Ulysses did, Thomas chose not to do.

It is interesting that this portion of the first utterance of St. Thomas, the great opponent of poetry for its seductive figurative quality, beautiful but simply untrue, contains several metaphors: the “stair” (the ascent of the heavens toward God) that Dante is on; the “wine” (knowledge) that Thomas will share with Dante; the “plants” (souls) that surround Beatrice and him; the “lambs” (friars) who were Thomas and his fellow Dominicans on earth; the “path” (the way to God) that led to his salvation; the “fattening” (knowledge of God's truth) found in the nourishment of the Word. One can only imagine Thomas's objection had he been able to read those words, put by Dante into his mouth. The last metaphor will have its second moment in the next canto (Par. XI.25), and then its last and triumphant appearance in the final verse of that canto (Par. XI.139).

The “stair” that is climbed only twice is the pathway to Heaven negotiated by a living soul in grace, who is thus promised a return trip (we again think of St. Paul, Dante's only known precursor, though unreported miraculous journeys are not ruled out). Grandgent (comm. to Par. X.87) notes that this is a clear prediction of Dante's ultimate salvation, and refers the reader to a similar earlier gesture in Purgatorio II.91-92 (and see, of course, Purg. XXXII.100-102).

It is perhaps significant that where the narrator had previously informed us (verse 65) that he and the other souls in the Sun made a center of Beatrice and Dante, Thomas now refers only to Beatrice as being at the center of their circle.

Thomas begins his “catologue of saints,” twelve in number perhaps to remind us of the original apostles, with Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), often referred to as “Doctor Universalis” because of his extensive learning; he taught at Cologne, where Aquinas was one of his pupils. In some quarters it has become fashionable, after the exertions of Bruno Nardi, to argue for the actual preeminence in Dante's thought of Albert over Thomas. But see Marc Cogan (The Design in the Wax: The Structure of the “Divine Comedy” and Its Meaning [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999], pp. xxiii-xxiv): “Despite Nardi's efforts to convince us that Albert the Great was Dante's preferred philosophical source, it is Aquinas whom Dante chooses as the principal spokesman for theology in the Paradiso, not Albert or any other theologian.” For more detailed arguments that are in basic agreement with this position, see Paul Arvisu Dumol (The Metaphysics of Reading Underlying Dante's “Commedia”: The “Ingegno” [New York: Peter Lang, 1998], esp. pp. 139-66).

See Paget Toynbee, “Some obligations of Dante to Albertus Magnus,” in (Dante Studies and Researches [Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1971], pp. 38-55), identifying eight passages in Albert's work that find their way into Dante's writings. The vast majority of these (six) are found in Convivio; only one is located in the Commedia.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), often referred to as “Doctor Angelicus,” was, in the minds of many, the greatest theologian of his time. It is perhaps fair to say that the position of those of Dante's readers most interested in the question has swung from the strict Thomistic construction of Dante sponsored by Giovanni Busnelli to the far more concessive views (which perhaps yield too much of Dante's allegiance to Thomism) of Mario Casella (“Nel cielo del Sole: l'anima e la mente di san Tommaso,” Studi Danteschi 29 [1950]: 5-40; 30 [1951]: 5-22; 31 [1952]: 5-30) and of two of the leading non-Italian students of the poet's theology, Étienne Gilson and Kenelm Foster. For an extensive treatment of Dante's intellectual response to Aquinas, see Gilson's classic study (Dante and Philosophy, tr. D. Moore [New York: Harper and Row, 1963 {1939}]); and see Foster's entry “Tommaso d'Aquino,” (ED V [1976]), pp. 626-49, as well as his much briefer English essay (in The Two Dantes and Other Studies [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977], pp. 56-65). Dante criticism is currently a good deal more “ecumenical,” a position that undergirds Amilcare Iannucci's fine brief treatment of this subject, “Theology,” in Lansing (Dante Encyclopedia [New York: Garland, 2000], pp. 811-15). It would not be going too far to say that Dante is a precursor of at least one aspect of Renaissance humanism, its pleasure in syncretism, a delight in putting together things that would prefer to be kept separate, making new concepts out of the ideas of the unsuspecting (and defenseless) great figures of the past, about some of which they would, had they a voice, surely bellow in complaint. For a similar view (and it is rare to come across the word “syncretism” used with favorable connotation for Dante's mode of thinking), see Zygmunt Baranski (“Canto XXII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002]), p. 361 (and see the note to Par. XXXII.34-36). For a cautionary note, indicating the complexity of the entire question of Dante's various philosophic allegiances, see Simon Gilson (“Medieval Science in Dante's Commedia: Past Approaches and Future Directions,” Reading Medieval Studies 27 [2001]: 39-77, passim).

The fact that Thomas was not canonized until two years after Dante's death does not in itself mean anything, although some argue that for Dante he consequently lacked the authority that sainthood confers. For him, as later for Boccaccio, the Church's judgments were far indeed from authoritative. For instance, the canonization of Pope Celestine V in 1313 left no mark in the poem; indeed, whether or not one thinks it is he who is referred to in Inferno III (see the note to Inf. III.58-60), the clear negative reference in Inferno XXVII.105 was not edited out after 1313, nor was it countered by some glowing reference in Paradiso, where it would have easily fit (e.g., in the sphere of Saturn, temporary home of the great contemplatives, including Benedict and Peter Damian). Indeed, while Dante may honor Thomas more than any other theologian, that does not mean that he always agrees with him - far from it.

Gratian, the twelfth-century collector and organizer of canon law, who in his Decretum, according to some of Dante's commentators, tried to harmonize secular and ecclesiastical law, the two courts referred to in verse 104; others believe Dante is referring to two functions of the Church, the sacramental and judgmental.

After the slam Dante has put in Folco's mouth against decretals (Par. IX.133-135), it seems strange to some that Gratian is so well rewarded. See Fiorenzo Forti (“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso,” dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], pp. 371-73) for the history of the dispute among the commentators caused by Dante's inclusion of Gratian here. And see Aldo Adversi (“Dante e il canonista Graziano [Par. X, 103-105],” Il Diritto ecclesiastico 106 [1995]: 499-513).

An almost exact contemporary of Gratian was Peter Lombard, the “Master of the Sentences” (his major work was the compendium Sententiarum Libri, presenting an elaborate overview of dogmatic theology). He says, in his preface to that work, that, like the poor widow in Luke's Gospel (21:1-4), he hopes to make his small contribution to God's treasury.

Solomon, son of David and king of Israel, the question of whose salvation was much discussed during the Middle Ages (see the reference to the world's hunger for news of him in vv. 110-111, along with its prime reasons for doubting that he was saved, his prodigious carnal affections in his old age and his falling into idolatry as part of these amours [I Kings 11:1-9]; these missteps were compounded, for some, by his authorship of the Canticle of Canticles). However, if the Truth be true (i.e., if we are to believe what we read in the Bible), God specifically (I Kings 3:12) singles Solomon out for the highest praise: “I have given you a wise and understanding heart, so that there was none like you before you, neither after you shall any arise like you (nec post te surrecturus sit),” this last the source of Dante's “non surse il secondo” (verse 114). This passage is probably remembered in Matthew 11:11, “Among them that are born of women there has not risen a greater than John the Baptist,” cited by Tommaseo (comm. to Par. X.112-114).

Michele Scherillo (“Perché Dante salva Salomone,” in his Alcuni capitoli della biografia di Dante [Turin: Loescher, 1896], pp. 299-311) reviews Solomon's many “disqualifications” from being considered an author of Scripture and then his checkered career among the exegetes, the most authoritative of whom, from Dante's own point of view (e.g., St. Augustine, Brunetto Latini), deny him salvation (if St. Jerome granted it). (For three twelfth-century theologians who differ [Philip of Harvengt, Peter Comestor, and Joachim of Flora], saying that Solomon was indeed saved, see Sarolli [Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” {Florence: Olschki, 1971}], pp. 210-15). Scherillo suggests that it was primarily his kingship that inspired Dante to consider him among the blessed, but does not overlook the force of the fact that Solomon was indeed, in Dante's eyes (and, of course, not in his alone) the author of canonical texts: Proverbs (see, e.g., Conv. III.xi.12; Mon. III.i.3), Ecclesiastes (see, e.g., Conv. II.x.10), the Canticle of Canticles (see, e.g., Conv. II.v.5); though he never refers to Solomon's authorship of the Book of Wisdom, he cites its first line in Paradiso XVIII.91-93. In other words, for Dante, Solomon is scriba Dei (a scribe of God). No matter how anyone might call into question his credentials, he has them. We may reflect that Dante shares both a “monarchical” and a “theological” identity with Solomon, poet of empire and of God, his new “Book of Wisdom” (replacing the previous and abandoned attempt, the Banquet) railing against the enemies of the true and God-centered empire. The more one thinks of Dante's Solomon, the more he becomes a likely choice as precursor of this poet (perhaps even in the light of his sexual trespass, something that he, his father (David), and Dante Alighieri, by his own confession [Purg. XXX and XXXI], have in common). They also share, as Dante might well have considered, authorship of works that seemingly celebrated carnal affection only, upon deeper consideration, to express love of a higher kind.

On Solomon's auctoritas see A.J. Minnis (Medieval Theory of Authorsip: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages [London: Scolar, 1984]), pp. 94-96; 110-12. For the view of Solomon of early Christian exegetes, see Mishtooni Bose (“From Exegesis to Appropriation: The Medieval Solomon,” Medium Aevum 65 [1996]: 187-210). On the sense of the overwhelming importance, for Dante's view of Solomon, of his authorship of the Book of Wisdom, see Jaroslav Pelikan (What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem? Timaeus and Genesis in Counterpoint [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997], p. 3): Wisdom “was the book that brought together the Timaeus and Genesis on the beginning of the world” (cited by Herzmann [“From Francis to Solomon: Eschatology in the Sun,” in Dante for the New Millennium, ed. Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storey {New York: Fordham University Press, 2003}], p. 330). For a study of Dante's sense of identity with Solomon, see Lauren Seem (“Nolite iudicare: Dante and the Dilemma of Judgment,” in Writers Reading Writers: Intertextual Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Literature in Honor of Robert Hollander, ed. Janet Levarie Smarr [Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007], pp. 73-88). Peter Dronke (“'Orizzonte che rischiari,'” in his Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 {1975}], p. 96) discusses Thomas's presence as one of three authors of commentaries to the Canticle of Canticles found here in the heaven of the Sun. One wants to keep in mind that the Canticle, which more than most canonical biblical texts requires elucidation to save it from its carnal self, was, along with the Psalms, among the most heavily commented books of the Bible in the Middle Ages.

Mario Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 43, points out that this is the third appearance in this canto of a form of the verb spirare (so closely and often associated with the “spiration” of the Holy Spirit), the only one to contain so many occurrences (see also vv. 2 and 51). He also observes that this word is part of this canto's program (1) to honor the activity of the Spirit in special ways; (2) to abrogate humans' pride in their wisdom, which is of divine origin (see Exod. 31:3); (3) to remind us that wisdom is the highest of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2).

Dionysius the Areopagite, converted by St. Paul at Athens (as mentioned by Luke in Acts 17:34) and martyred there in A.D. 95. He was erroneously assumed to be the author of the De caelesti hierarchia, a work particularly prized for its description of the orders of the angels and of their nature. (Dante makes wide use of it in the Paradiso.) The Celestial Hierarchy and three others of the reputed works of Dionysius were actually produced some five centuries later by Greek neo-platonists and were translated into Latin only in the ninth century.

Orosius, whose historical compendium, entitled Historiae adversus paganos, was written at the suggestion of St. Augustine as a defense of the Christian religion's beneficial role in human history. Augustine made use of it in writing his De civitate Dei, and it is frequently used by Dante. See Toynbee (Dante Studies and Researches [Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1971 {1902}], “Dante's obligations to the Ormista,” pp. 121-36) for the opinion that the reference is indeed to Orosius, which for a long time has been the view of the majority of the commentators. However, Alberto Pincherle, “Agostino,” ED I (1970), p. 82b, mentions the usual suspects (Orosius, Ambrose, Tertullian, Paulinus of Nola, and Lactantius), and settles on Marius Victorinus. For continued insistence that the avvocato de' tempi cristiani is in fact Orosius, see Giorgio Brugnoli (“I tempi cristiani di Dante,” Critica del testo 1 [1998]: 491-92). The early commentators were divided, with the majority favoring St. Ambrose, but others backing Orosius. After them, the majority opinion has settled on Orosius by a wide margin, with many convinced by Venturi's argument (comm. to this tercet) that Dante would never have spoken of the great St. Ambrose as a “piccioletta luce” (little light). Moore should still be consulted (Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the “Divina Commedia” [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1889], pp. 457-60) for three strong arguments for the reference's being to Orosius and not to Ambrose. But see Otfried Lieberknecht (“'L'avvocato de' tempi cristiani,' Par. 10.118-120: Ambrose of Milan Reconsidered,” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America [September 1996]) for a thoughtful attempt to resuscitate Ambrose's candidacy, even if the author ends by admitting that Orosius remains the front-runner.

In the first of these three tercets, as a unique instance among this bevy of illuminati, Dante calls attention to the importance of a particular soul, a signal honor done Boethius, the author of the De consolatione Philosophiae. Dante mentions him, always with this particular text in mind, some dozen times in Convivio (first in I.ii.13). He was active in the first half of the sixth century, holding the consulship at Rome, but earned the displeasure of the emperor, Theodoric, who imprisoned him at Pavia and finally had him put to death by torture. See the note to verse 128.

There is a possibility that Dante was aware of the problematic nature of Boethius's Christian faith. He was a convert, and subsequently wrote Christian apologetic works; but defenders of his orthodoxy are hard put to explain the total absence of overt Christian reference in the Consolatio. A good deal of effort has gone into that enterprise, but one has the nagging feeling that Nicholas Trivet was perhaps justified in claiming that Boethius, in this last stage, was not a Christian, but a neo-platonist. For a review of the entire issue, see Pierre Courcelle (La Consolation de Philosophie dans la tradition littéraire [Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1967]). For discussion of Dante's possible sense that the Consolatio was not all it should have been, see Hollander (“Purgatorio II: Cato's Rebuke and Dante's scoglio,” Italica 52 [1975]: 353-55, 361-62). For a more recent attempt to deal with the question, see Giuseppina Mezzadroli (“Dante, Boezio e le sirene,” Lingua e stile 25 [1990]: 49-50).

See Trucchi (comm. to vv. 1-6) for the notion that, where Aquinas (ST Supp., q. 69, a. 2) says that only some will have to spend time in Purgatory before they pass on to Heaven, Dante has all go, with exceptions of those like Boethius, Francis, and Cacciaguida, the auspicious few, according to Isidoro del Lungo (in an unspecified text); i.e., Dante's view is the exact counterpart, if in opposition, to that of Thomas. See the note to Paradiso XI.109-117.

Luca Curti (“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 159) reminds us that Augustine's remains were ca. 725 removed from Sardegna (where they had been taken from Hippo) and taken to Pavia by the Lombard king, Liutprand, who reinterred them in the basilica of Cieldauro. Where might Dante have learned this? In the opinion of Curti, from the Chronicon of the Venerable Bede (present in verse 131). (Casini/Barbi [comm. to this verse] had already pointed out that both Augustine and Boethius were reburied beneath imposing monuments in that church by Liutprand.)

Isidore (bishop) of Seville compiled one of the first great medieval encyclopedias in the seventh century, his twenty books of Etymologies. He was, either directly or indirectly (e.g., through the derivative work of Uguccione da Pisa), one of Dante's main authorities on any number of subjects.

The Venerable Bede, the ecclesiastical historian of Britain, lived well into the eighth century. See Emilio Pasquini (Dante e le figure del vero: La fabbrica della “Commedia” [Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2001], pp. 283-91) for claims on behalf of the writings of Bede (Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, De natura rerum, De metrica arte) as hitherto unexplored sources for a number of passages in the Commedia.

Richard of St. Victor wrote during the twelfth century. He and his master, Hugo of St. Victor (for whom see Par. XII.133), were mystical theologians in the monastery of St. Victor near Paris. “He was said to be a native of Scotland, celebrated scholastic philosopher and theologian, chief of the mystics of the twelfth century. He was, with Peter Lombard, a pupil of the famous Hugh of St. Victor, and a friend of St. Bernard, to whom several of his works are dedicated; he died at St. Victor in 1173. His writings, which are freely quoted by Thomas Aquinas, consist of commentaries on parts of the Old Testament, St. Paul's epistles, and the Apocalypse, as well as of works on moral and dogmatic subjects, and on mystical contemplation, the last of which earned him the title of 'Magnus Contemplator'” (Toynbee, “Ugo da San Vittore” [Concise Dante Dictionary]). Dante, in his Epistle to Cangrande (Epist. XIII.28), when justifying his dealing with transcendental subjects in the Paradiso, appeals to Richard's work De contemplatione.

Siger of Brabant, thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian who taught at the Faculty of the Arts of the Sorbonne, located near “the Street of Straw,” the Rue du Fouarre in Paris (one of the few pieces of “evidence” seized on by those who believe, as few today do, that Dante visited Paris; but the street's name was apparently widely known; and Dante might have heard details about the theological disputes in Paris, for instance from the Dominican Remigio dei Girolami, who had studied with St. Thomas in Paris and who lectured at S. Maria Novella between 1289 and 1303). In 1270 Thomas wrote his De Unitate intellectus contra averroistas, clearly attacking some of Siger's teaching (along with that of others). Between 1270 and 1277 Siger was prosecuted by the archbishop of Paris Étienne Tempier (and in 1276 by the inquisitor for France, Simon du Val) for heretical ideas and found guilty. He went to Orvieto to face the Roman Curia and apparently owned up to his wayward philosophizing, and perhaps was absolved for it. He then stayed in Orvieto, in a condition perhaps resembling house arrest, where he apparently met his death beneath the knife of a mad cleric, possibly a man assigned to him as a servant, ca. 1283-84. The author of Il Fiore (XCII.9-11) mentions Siger's terrible end. For a compact bibliography of Siger's extensive body of work, those considered genuine, those possibly or probably by others, and those now lost, as well as a short list of studies of his impact on Dante, see Cesare Vasoli, “Sigieri (Sighieri) di Brabante,” ED V (1976), pp. 241b-42a. For a study that considers the clash in the Commedia of intellectual pride (as represented by Guido Cavalcanti) and great-souled humility (as represented by Saint Francis), see Marco Veglia (“Per un'ardita umiltà. L'averroismo di Dante tra Guido Cavalcanti, Sigieri di Brabante e San Francesco d'Assisi,” Schede Umanistiche 1 [2000]: 67-106). He argues that this clash is seen in action first with respect to heresy (Inf. X), then with respect to art (Purg. X and XI), and finally with respect to philosophy and theology (Par. X and XI); he sees the parallels established by the numbers of the cantos involved confirming evidence for his thesis. Naturally, Siger plays a major role in Veglia's considerations.

For a revisionary presentation of the entire question of Dante's opinion of Siger, see Ruedi Imbach (Dante, la philosophie et les laïcs [Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1996], pp. 141-48), who opposes both Bruno Nardi's basic view (Siger had in fact not said anything heretical) and Maria Corti's (he had indeed, but when challenged, eschewed his Averroism and offered his repentance and a softening of his earlier thought). Imbach goes on to point out that Dante on at least one occasion (see the note to Par. XXIX.79-80) indeed seems to go out of his way to embrace one of Siger's heretical ideas (that the angels have no memory). But see the note to Par. XXIX.82-84. For recent work on the problems afflicting attempts to come to grips with the complicated issues surrounding the tormented question of Dante's view(s) of Siger, see, among others, Giuseppe Mazzotta (“Dante's Siger of Brabant: Logic and Vision,” in Dante: Summa Medievalis, ed. Charles Franco and Leslie Morgan [Stony Brook, NY: Forum Italicum, 1995], pp. 40-51) and Luca Curti (“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002]), pp. 158-64. And see Scott (“Il Sigieri dantesco rivisitato,” LIA 8 [forthcoming 2007?]), a draft of which the author was kind enough to share.

On the possible intellect, the doctrine developed by Averroes from Aristotle's De anima (III.4-8) and denied by Thomas, but admired by Dante, see Imbach (Dante, la philosophie et les laïcs [Fribourg: Editions Universitaires], pp. 174-79); for Dante's “adjustments” to his precursors' provisions so as to make the possible intellect square with Christian views of the immortality of the soul, see pp. 180-89. For the question of the freedom of the will in Siger, see Christopher J. Ryan (“Man's Free Will in the Works of Siger de Brabant,” Mediaeval Studies 45 [1981]: 155-99).

For an invaluable survey of the state of the question regarding the interrelationships among Aristotle, Averroes, Albertus Magnus, and Aquinas, as they affect Dante's own philosophical views, see the first half of the study by Simon Gilson (“Rimaneggiamenti danteschi di Aristotele: gravitas e levitas nella Commedia,” in Le culture di Dante. Atti del quarto Seminario dantesco internazionale, ed. Michelangelo Picone et al. [Florence: Cesati, 2004], pp. 151-77). For a brief but most helpful summary in English of the strands of Dante's Aristotelianism, see Scott, “Aristotle” (in Lansing, ed., Dante Encyclopedia [New York: Garland, 2000], pp. 61-65). For a discussion of the major “heresies” current in Dante's time, see Adriano Comollo (Il dissenso religioso in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1990]). In an e-mail of 4 September 2005, Prof. E. Jeffrey Richards suggested that Dante put Siger next to Thomas as a gesture against Tempier's virulent accusations in 1277, not only (clearly if not nominally) against Siger, but against the equally unnamed Thomas as well. Thus one of the tasks of this canto may be seen as essentially Dante's presentation of his reaction to Tempier's attack on the new champions of Aristotle's authority, including the wide spectrum represented by Albertus Magnus (the least virulent of the new men), Thomas Aquinas (in the middle, literally, of Dante's panoply), and Siger de Brabant (the most extreme). We in the twenty-first century may not have enough feel for the huge change in theology wrought by the rediscovery of Aristotle in the thirteenth century. Dante clearly felt himself drawn to the new philosophy, as is evident by his placing Aristotle higher than Plato as a figure of classical philosophical authority, as is first reflected in the Commedia in Inferno IV.131.

What the reader is supposed to understand about these thoughts that made death seem welcome to Siger is debated; perhaps it is his concern, mirrored in his retraction in or perhaps after 1276, that his earlier erring notions might condemn him to damnation in God's eyes, despite his finally having chosen the true faith. To some it has seemed possible that Dante may have decided that Siger was particularly worried about embracing the doctrine of the existence of “double truth” (duplex veritas or double vérité) – but the first Dante commentator who seems to have used the phrase is Sapegno [comm. to verse 136 ]), i.e., the positing of the possibility of something being true by rational standards (e.g., the proposition “all men are mortal”) while its contradictory is considered true on the basis of faith (e.g., the “immortality” of Jesus). However, for a flat denial that Siger ever embraced this concept, see Fernand Van Steenberghen (Maître Siger de Brabant [Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1977]), pp. 151, 242-43, 248-50 (and see the chapter, “Siger dans la Divine Comédie,” pp. 165-76; see also esp. pp. 23-26). Dante, who had not read Van Steenberghen, may have joined in this widely shared (if erroneous) opinion, deriving from Tempier's accusation that his “Averroist” enemies held exactly such dangerous opinions. Despite the confusions of some modern critics (principally Father Mandonnet), Van Steenberghen argues that there is not a shred of evidence that Siger embraced that position. He did indeed observe that philosophy and theology operated in different ways, but always, according to Van Steenberghen, privileged theology. Cesare Vasoli (“Sigieri,” ED V [1976], pp. 238a-242b) is less certain of Siger's sincerity in hewing to this line (since it was dangerous, as he would find out if he did not already know, even to be suspected of harboring such doubts). Dante may have decided that his appearance before the Roman Curia in Orvieto “cured” him of his heretical bent, and that, when he was murdered, he was living in the bosom of Mother Church. For a major study, revaluating Thomas's little treatise and making it the cornerstone of his thought and the high point in medieval Aristotelianism, see Alain de Libera, L'unité de l'intellect: Commentaire du “De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas” de Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 2004).

See Giampiero Tulone (“Gli 'invidiosi veri' nella Commedia e nelle fonti dantesche,” Lettere Italiane 52 [2000]: 345-78) for a review of the problem caused by the phrase invidiosi veri (enviable truths). Tulone's hypothesis is that Dante's text refers to the envy of those who hypocritically oppose Siger's sound doctrinal teaching by claiming it is other than Christian. And see Giuseppe Mazzotta (“The Heaven of the Sun: Dante between Aquinas and Bonaventure,” in Dante for the New Millennium, ed. Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storey [New York: Fordham University Press, 2003], p. 155), who is of the opinion that invidiosi means “not logically evident or demonstrable,” on what grounds it is difficult to say. Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 133-138) distinguishes between the words invidiosus and invidus as follows: “invidiosus enim est ille cui invidetur propter suam felicitatem: et sic capitur in bona parte; invidus vero est ille qui invidet alteri; et sic capitur in mala parte” (for the man who is invidiosus is one who is envied because of his happiness, and the word is then understood positively; the man who is invidus, on the other hand, is one who is envious of another, and the word is then understood negatively). Luca Curti (“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 162), while not referring to Benvenuto, may have cited one of the fourteenth-century commentator's sources: Isidore of Seville (Etym. X.134): One who is invidus envies the happiness of another, while the man who is invidiosus suffers the envy of others. Benvenuto intrinsically disagrees with the glosses of Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 133-138) and of the Ottimo (comm to vv. 133-138), both of whom believe that the syllogisms “envy the truth” (“hanno invidia al vero”), in the sense that they themselves lack the properties possessed by the truth. As for the word silogizzò (which we have translated as “demonstrated”), from the beginning there has been dispute as to whether it is to be taken negatively or positively. Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 133-138) argues that these syllogisms are untrue, while Benvenuto da Imola (commenting on the same passage) is of the opposite opinion, namely that the syllogisms of Siger's making are indeed truthful, and for that reason the subject of envy on the part of those who heard and admired them. Over the years a large majority of the commentators are of Benvenuto's opinion; and see Marco Veglia (“Per un'ardita umiltà. L'averroismo di Dante tra Guido Cavalcanti, Sigieri di Brabante e San Francesco d'Assisi,” Schede Umanistiche 1 [2000]: 103 and note) for a concordant reflection. That Siger is saved has undoubtedly contributed to the forming of this view; the words themselves might seem far less generous in a different context. See, for example, the second verse of the next canto.

According to Scott (Understanding Dante [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004], p. 297), this is the first reference in literature to a mechanical clock. He cites Dronke (“'Orizzonte che rischiari,'” in his Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 {1975}], pp. 101-2), who suggests that Dante might have seen the one built in Milan in 1306 when he was there for the coronation of Henry VII (in 1310). And see Moevs (“Miraculous Syllogisms: Clocks, Faith and Reason in Paradiso 10 and 24,” Dante Studies 117 [1999]: 59-84) for the nature and location of clocks in Dante's time. It is hardly credible, as a distinguished scholar who will be allowed to remain anonymous said in a recent lecture, that the scene is meant to put us in mind of a Florentine husband readying himself for getting into bed with his wife while a clock in their bedroom tolls the hour, as the scene is clearly a morning one, and as it would be many years before mechanical clocks of that small size and portability were available. This is not that sort of sound, but one of chimes from a (distant?) clock tower.

Ronald Martinez, in a paper he prepared for the International Dante Seminar (at the University of Notre Dame in September 2003), believed that these verses echo Solomon's song (Cant. 3:1): “In lectulo meo, per noctes, quaesivi quem diligit anima mea, Quaesivi illum, et non inveni, Surgam, et circuibo civitatem...” (By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loves: I sought him, but I found him not; I will arise now, and go about the city...). The Song of Solomon certainly offers analogues to the expression of love found here, but the time of day in this passage is off: it is night and not dawn. (The fact that Martinez omitted this passage from the eventual printed version [“The Poetics of Advent Liturgies: Dante's Vita Nova and Purgatorio,” in Le culture di Dante. Atti del quarto Seminario dantesco internazionale, ed. Michelangelo Picone et al. {Florence: Cesati, 2004}, pp. 271-304] does not indicate that he has changed his mind; his paper was three times its printable length. The finished version is an important contribution to our knowledge of how some biblical texts may have found their way to Dante's attention from liturgical sources.)

For turge see Lino Pertile (La punta del disio: Semantica del desiderio nella “Commedia” [Fiesole: Cadmo, 2005], pp. 173-76), pointing out, with numerous examples, that the word has never before been used, in Latin, with a sexual denotation, a meaning it acquired only later on. Dante, having conflated love and intellect, at least by the opening of this canto, can use the vocabularies interchangeably, or substitute the former for the latter, as he does here. Psychologists refer to another version of this process as sublimation, an attempt to skirt a painful awareness of sexual desire by replacing it with a more “acceptable” activity. In Jesus' teaching (e.g., the wise virgins preparing for the arrival of the bridegroom [Matth. 25:1-13]) we can see a more positive sense of sexuality, if it is also simultaneously seen as the basis for its own supersession, taking carnal pleasure past its physical expression and its physical limits. E.g., “If you enjoy the thought of consummating a marriage, oh, will you enjoy the kingdom of Heaven!” It would seem likely that Dante's transposition of terms generally associated with sexual desire to descriptions of the longing for God, as innovative as it may seem to be, is in fact a continuation of a highly similar practice in Jesus' teaching, as it is found with some frequency in the Gospels.