In sharp contrast to both the opening six and concluding nine verses of the preceding canto, with their visionary taste of a Trinitarian and ordered love and then the sound made by the singing souls in the Sun (compared to the harmonious chiming of matins calling monks to prayer), the opening nine verses of this canto summon images of ceaseless and futile human activity, from which Dante is happy to have been, at least temporarily, liberated. Defending both the importance and power of this introductory passage, disliked by some for delaying Francis's appearance in Thomas's narrative, see Mario Aversano, “S. Francesco nel canto XI del Paradiso” (in Il velo di Venere: Allegoria e teologia dell'immaginario dantesco [Naples: Federico & Ardia, 1984], pp. 169-77).

Dante's reflection of the opening verse of Persius's Satires (“O curas hominum, o quantum est in rebus inane” [O wearisome cares of men, o emptiness of the things we care for]) had an early twentieth-century notice in Alfonso Bertoldi (Il canto XI del “Paradiso” [“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele,” Florence: Sansoni, 1903], p. 7). However, it was first observed in the late fourteenth century by the author of the Chiose ambrosiane, and not, as Ettore Paratore (“Persio,” ED IV [1973]) claimed, by Vellutello a century and a half later. Dante does name Persius once (see Purg. XXII.100). Exempting those texts with which he obviously has wide acquaintance (e.g., the Bible, Aristotle, Virgil, Ovid), we should probably be aware that in medieval compendia and in references to other works in treatises, incipits were a customary way in which to refer to a previous author's work. Thus, when we come a reference in Dante's pages that consists only of the first line of a text, we should be careful before assigning him even a minimal acquaintance with that particular text. For instance, Mario Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 48, suggests that Dante's text here reflects the citation of the first verse of Persius's first Satire in Alain de Lille's Summa de arte praedicatoria. But see Paratore, “Persio,” for a strong argument that Dante knew the actual texts of Persius.

The word cura has an interesting history in the poem. It occurs only four times in Inferno, and then is never used of the emotions of a damned soul, and is only used of either Virgil or Dante once (at Inf. XXXIV.135), when they are on their way up to Purgatory. In fact, most of its uses are found in Purgatorio (ca. 21, something over half its total appearances), with only about a dozen or fewer in Paradiso. Somehow, it seems quintessentially a word associated with human life on earth, or in the most related form of afterlife, that experienced in purgatory. In both these arenas care is inevitable, anxiety in the living for whatever threatens human well being or pleasure, concern in the purging dead lest they not accomplish their task as quickly and as well as possible.

Depending on whether we have read Paradiso X.138 in bono or in malo, that is, whether we have thought Dante meant to praise or blame Siger's “syllogizing,” we decide that the noun form of that word is here used oppositionally or with the same intonation. See the note to Paradiso X.138 for reasons to prefer the first alternative; where Siger is admirable for his powers of reasoning, the normal run of men is not, merely using reason to advance their cupidinous designs.

Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 48, suggests that difettivi (flawed) is one of the key words of this canto, calling into question all prideful intellectual acts of humankind, which contrast with the humility embodied in Francis.

The metaphor of lowered wings suggests that we mortals, born worms but with the ability to be transformed into angelic butterflies (according to Purg. X.124-125), nevertheless choose to direct our cares to the things of this world, lowering the level of our desires.

Dante's list of vain human activities starts out with law (whether civil or canonical); medicine (identified by one of the earliest known doctors, Hippocrates, author of the medical text that bears the title, Aphorisms); priesthood (as a position rather than as a calling); political power (whether achieved by force or guile). This list matches up fairly well with the one found earlier (at Par. VIII.124-126: Solon, Xerxes, Melchizedek, Daedalus) in at least three out of four categories, if there is no easy match between Hippocrates (the doctor) and Daedalus (the artisan). This opening catalogue of four professions is conjoined to a second one, also of four activities, now divided into two parts, the lower instincts (robbery [with avarice at its root] and sexual pleasure [the sin of lust]) and the more civilized (but equally distracting) behaviors, immersion in civic duty or in one's idle self. (Michel de Montaigne would have sharply disagreed with Dante's harsh view of otium.)

Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) point out that Dante's word sacerdozio for “priesthood” has the sense of an ecclesiastical office that yields a good living to its holder, and refer to Dante's previous attack on those religious (almost all of them, Dante has previously said) who study only in order to gain wealth or honors (see Conv. III.xi.10).

Punning on the first noun in Paradiso, the glory (la gloria) of God, Dante separates himself from the eight activities he has just catalogued by noting his freedom from such preoccupations as are caused by them and enjoying his presence here in the Sun, welcomed by these souls who live, still higher above, in gloria with God.

The spirits moving in this first solar circle, having surrounded Beatrice and Dante, become fixed, like candles on their holders, and one of them (Thomas) speaks.

Dante here gives Thomas one of the relatively few similes allowed to a speaker in the poem. One feels compelled to wonder what, had he been able to read these cantos of Paradiso, he would have thought of his inclusion in them. See the note to Paradiso X.86-96.

Perhaps we are meant to be amused that Thomas's eulogy of Francis begins as a gloss on two difficult passages in his own “poem” (see Par. X.96 and X.114), the veiled speech that made the historical Thomas distrust poetry.

This convoluted and difficult passage may be paraphrased as follows: “God's foresight, with such deep wisdom that none may fathom it, selected two guides for the Church so that she, married to Him at the moment when Christ cried out in pain on the Cross [Daniello, comm. to vv. 28-34: see Luke 23:46] and shed His blood to wed her [Lombardi, comm. to vv. 31-34: see Acts 20:28], might proceed joyously, and with greater confidence and faith, following Him.” Thus Francis and Dominic, the first of whom was indeed often portrayed as a “second Christ” (see, among others, Auerbach [“St. Francis of Assisi in Dante's Commedia,” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, tr. C. Garvin {New York: Meridian Books, 1959 [1944]}, p. 85]), each takes on the role of Christ in husbanding the Church through her many tribulations both in his lifetime and thereafter, by instrument of the mendicant order that he, having founded, left behind him.

See Umberto Cosmo (L'ultima ascesa: Introduzione alla lettura del “Paradiso”, ed. B. Maier [Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1965 {1936}], pp. 123-25) for the view that Dante nourished his hopes for the Church's renewal with the writings of Ubertino da Casale, particularly his Arbor vitae crucifixae Iesu.

The complementarity of the founders of the two orders is insisted on here, not their distinguishing features. Thus before we hear a word about either Francis or Dominic, respectively associated with the Seraphim (the highest angelic order) and love and with the Cherubim (the next order down) and knowledge, we are informed in no uncertain terms that we should not rank one higher than the other. See the note to Paradiso XII.46-57. And see Carroll (comm. to vv. 37-39) for a similar attempt to bridge what he refers to as “mysticism” and “scholasticism.”

It may have been Bernardino Daniello (comm. to vv. 40-42) who first brought historical fact into play in interpreting this part of the canto. It was a matter of record, he reports, that on Francis's feast day (4 October) one of the friars of his order would preach the virtues of Dominic, while on the feast of Dominic (8 August), a Dominican would do the same for Francis. Daniello suggests that this practice lies behind Dante's here. As many have ruefully noted, that spirit of fraternity between these two groups of friars did not present an accurate picture of the relations, in fact emulous, between these two mendicant Orders in Dante's time.

For a likely source in the Arbor vitae crucifixae Iesu of Ubertino da Casale for Dante's making Francis seraphic and Dominic cherubic, see Nicolò Mineo (“La 'vita' di San Francesco nella 'festa di paradiso,'” in I primi undici canti del “Paradiso” [Lectura Dantis Metelliana], ed. Attilio Mellone [Rome: Bulzoni, 1992], p. 273).

Here begins Dante's Vita Francisci. On Dante's sense of the life of Francis as a model for his representation of his once prideful and now exiled self, see Ronald Herzman (“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. 323). For a brief essay on the canto as a whole, see Bruno Nardi (“Il canto di S. Francesco,” in his “Lecturae” e altri studi danteschi, ed. Rudy Abardo [Florence: Le Lettere, 1990 {1964}], pp. 173-84); for a much longer treatment, see Nicolò Mineo (“La 'vita' di San Francesco nella 'festa di paradiso,'” in I primi undici canti del “Paradiso” [Lectura Dantis Metelliana], ed. Attilio Mellone [Rome: Bulzoni, 1992], pp. 223-320). For bibliography, see Stanislao da Campagnola, “Francesco di Assisi, santo,” ED III (1971). For the various lives of Francis known to Dante, see Stanislao da Campagnola's article (“Francesco d'Assisi in Dante,” Laurentianum 24 [1983]: 175-92). And for the relationship between the historical Francis and Dante's portrait of him, see Attilio Mellone (“Il san Francesco di Dante e il san Francesco della storia,” in Dante e il francescanesimo [Cava de' Terreni: Avagliano, 1987], pp. 11-73) and Mario Aversano (Dante e gli “scritti” di San Francesco [Salerno: Palladio, 1984]), arguing that sources for much of the language dedicated to portraying St. Francis are found in Francis's own writings; but his proofs are far from conclusive, given that the texts he cites from Francis, as will often necessarily be the case, are frequently themselves citations of the Bible. For some more recent bibliography, see Teodolinda Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992], p. 334, n. 6). And now see Nick Havely (Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the “Commedia” [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004]) for the overall influence on the Comedy of Franciscan writings concerning poverty.

These three tercets of Thomas might be paraphrased as follows: “Between the Topino and the Chiascio, which flows down from Gubbio, perched on a fertile slope on Mount Subasio, whence Perugia, some twelve miles to the west, feels both cold air from the mountains and the heat of the easterly sun, sits Assisi, while farther to the east the towns Nocera and Gualdo suffer both from the cold and from being misgoverned by the Guelph Perugians. From here, where the mountain is least steep, arose a sun, just as the Sun we are in rises from Ganges in summer (when it is brightest).”

But see Guglielmo Gorni (“Due note su Paradiso XI,” L'Alighieri 23 [2004]: 47-51) for an argument, countering that offered first by Alfonso Bertoldi (Il canto XI del “Paradiso” [“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele,” Florence: Sansoni, 1903]), who holds for a political reading of these verses) and that goes a step farther than E.G. Parodi (Lingua e letteratura, ed. G. Folena [Venice: Neri Pozza, 1957], p. 387), who simply opposes a political reading), that this geography needs to be understood in religious (and not political) terms, i.e., that God smiles upon the place of Francis's birth.

The “blessèd Ubaldo,” canonized in 1192, was born Ubaldo Baldassini in 1084 and served as Bishop of Gubbio (1129-1160). Before he allowed himself an ecclesiastical life, he lived as a hermit on a hill near that town, along the stream named Chiascio.

Before it was destroyed, Porta Sole was one of the city gates of Perugia. Located on the southeast side of the city, it faced Assisi.

Nocera is a town in Umbria, some fifteen miles northeast of Assisi; Gualdo Tadino is also in Umbria and like it on the eastern slope of Mount Subasio. The two towns “mourn beneath their heavy yoke” perhaps in two senses: literally, they are beneath the peaks of the Apennine range (and thus overshadowed by them); metaphorically, they suffer under Guelph rule.

The Ganges, about which we will hear again in Paradiso XIX.71, was for Dante the defining eastern limit of his world. (Seville [Inf. XX.126 and XXVI.110] was close to the western limit, as Ulysses discovered). For earlier reference to the Ganges, see Purgatorio II.5 and XXVII.4.

Ascesi: For the phrase describing Francis as “quasi Sol oriens in mundo” (like the Sun rising on the world) by one of his chroniclers, Bernardo da Bessa, see Ignazio Baldelli (“Il canto XI del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VI [Florence: Le Monnier, 1973], p. 105); this source was perhaps first cited by Daniello (comm. to verse 50). Perhaps the only commentator to be properly puzzled by what this verse means, whether in Dante's formulation itself or in more than six hundred years of commentary that have yet to produce a convincing resolution, is Chimenz (comm. to vv. 52-54). For a discussion of the complementary if differing interpretations of Bosco and Auerbach, see Giacalone (comm. to verse 54). But no one apparently has thought of the most simple reason that might have made Dante prefer “Orïente” to “Ascesi”: the tenses of the Latin verb and participle. “Ascesi” (“I have risen,” certainly a Christ-like enough word) yields to “Orïente” (rising) because the second word is present tense, i.e., is not confined to the past. Francis, like Christ, is always rising, leading us Heavenward.

The first commentator to turn to Bonaventure's life of Francis for a source, a practice of many contemporary glossators, was apparently Lombardi (comm. to vv. 53-54): “Vidi Alterum Angelum ascendentem ab ortu Solis, habentem signum Dei vivi” (I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God [Apoc. 7:2]). We may note that St. Bonaventure's biblical formula also makes use of a present participle - two of them, in fact. Umberto Bosco (Dante vicino [Caltanissetta: Sciascia, 1966], p. 322) privileges the Apocalypse over Franciscan writings as compelling Dante's attention, but not convincingly, since Dante may have been reminded of the Apocalypse precisely by Bonaventure.

Dante puns on the Sun again, using a metaphoric valence for his birth (orto [rising]) more readily associated with the rising of a star or planet in the sky.

Again Francis, beginning his career of service to God and humankind, is seen as the Sun, now preparing the earth to be fruitful.

Francis's father raised his son to pursue the life of commerce, as he himself had done. Dante has boiled down into a single tercet the dramatic story of Francis's public rejection of his father's plans for him, taking the clothes off his back to return them to him in a public square of Assisi. This choice is represented here by his “marrying” Lady Poverty. (One of the popular Franciscan narratives of the thirteenth century was the Sacrum commercium beati Francisci cum domina Paupertate. For an attempt to establish Dante's acquaintance with this work as already revealed in passages in Purgatorio, see Havely [“Poverty in Purgatory: From Commercium to Commedia,” Dante Studies 114 {1996}: 229-43]. That conceit gives the controlling image to the next fifty verses (58-117). And, while even indirect reference to the conflict between the Spiritual and Conventual Franciscans will not confront the reader until the next canto (XII.124), it is clear from the outset that Dante essentially sides with the Spirituals, whose central and urgent position was the radical insistence on the Church owning nothing, a view that happens to coincide with Dante's political views. This is not to say that his religious feelings about poverty were ungenuine, but merely to point out that a secondary reason for them does exist. Raoul Manselli, “francescanesimo,” ED III (1971), pp. 14a-16b, points out that the fourteenth-century struggle within the Order had its roots in the papacy of Celestino V, in the waning years of the thirteenth century, when a group of Franciscans received permission to split off and form their own “sub-order.” They were fairly soon forced to flee Italy (most of them for Greece). This group included John of Peter Olivi and Ubertino of Casale, both of whom eventually resurfaced in Florence. For a recent discussion in English of Dante's views of the Spiritual Franciscans, see Havely (Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the “Commedia” [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], 2004).

As Erich Auerbach (“St. Francis of Assisi in Dante's Commedia,” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, tr. C. Garvin [New York: Meridian Books, 1959 {1944}], p. 84) points out, the painted representation of the life of Francis in the lower church at Assisi contains no reference to this “marriage,” which is the subject of another (allegorical) painting, set apart from the cycle of Francis's deeds, while Dante treats it as the central act in the Saint's life.

For Dante's possible reaction to the account of the visit to Francis of the three poverty-stricken women (mulieres pauperculae), see Edmund Gardner (Dante and the Mystics [London: Dent, 1913], pp. 240-42). He points out that elements in the exilic canzone, “Tre donne attorno al cor mi son venute” (Rime CIV), represent perhaps the first extensive borrowing from a Franciscan text in Dante's work, arguing that the appearance of Poverty and her two companions to Francis on his way to Siena furnish the basic ingredients of this moving poem.

In the past sixty years there has been dispute over the somewhat curious phrase “la porta del piacere” (lit., “the door of pleasure”), generally understood to understate the aversion to poverty, i.e., none opens the door to her gladly, none welcomes poverty into his heart. This became “the doorway to pleasure” (die Pforte der Lust [Neue Dantestudien, Istanbul, 1944, p. 80]) in Auerbach's (“St. Francis of Assisi in Dante's Commedia,” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, tr. C. Garvin [New York: Meridian Books, 1959 {1944}], pp. 88-89) formulation (his translator does not help his case, making porta plural, while it is singular, and mistranslating piacere in her “gates of desire,” if one must admit that translating the phrase presents something of a problem). If most were scandalized by this reading, it has found support in some quarters, e.g., Marguerite Mills Chiarenza (“Dante's Lady Poverty,” Dante Studies 111 [1993]: 153-75). The core of Auerbach's interpretation, possibly the most controversial point in a series of works dealing with Dante that were hardly intended to be without cause for controversy, may be represented in a single sentence: “It seems to me absolutely necessary to interpret the opening of the gates of desire in the proper sense as a sexual act, and thus porta as the gateway to the feminine body” (p. 88). For some of the many counter-arguments, see Ettore Bonora (“Canto XI,” in Lectura Dantis Neapolitana: “Paradiso,” ed. P. Giannantonio [Naples: Loffredo, 2000 {1987}], pp. 242-43); Emilio Pasquini (“Il Paradiso e una nuova idea di figuralismo,” Intersezioni 16 [1996]: 422-23); see also Pasquini (Dante e le figure del vero: La fabbrica della “Commedia” [Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2001], pp. 193-94). Supporters of Auerbach's reading fail to take into account that it is the male in the metaphor who opens his “porta del piacere” to the lady, thus rendering the entire genital argument inapplicable.

In 1207, before the court of the bishop of his hometown and coram patre (Latin: “in the presence of his father”), he renounced his family and the life that had been chosen for him in order to follow Christ. In no other figure in the history of the Church does the concept of the “imitation of Christ” have so obvious and central a relation as it has in the life of Francis of Assisi.

His “spouse,” Poverty, once chosen, becomes increasingly more precious to him; as we will shortly find out (vv. 64-66), she had been married once before, and her previous husband had been no one less than Jesus.

While at first the reader is perhaps not sure as to the identity of Poverty's first husband, it will soon (at verse 72) become clear that she was Jesus' “wife,” left a widow by the Crucifixion in A.D. 34, and remaining “unmarried” for 1173 years, unwanted by any other suitor, until Francis' vow in 1207.

Dante has outdone himself. The writings about Francis (who was practically the cause of the explosion of the biography industry all by himself [there were at least eight “lives” produced within the century of his death]) have, except for the Gospels, no antecedents. Dante's addition to existing Franciscan material is spectacularly original in its reworking of the basic narrative found in Bonaventure and others. Dante expands the role of poverty not so much conceptually (the devotion to poverty is the keystone of all Franciscan writings) but stylistically, making his saintly life an allegorical tale of his relationship to her. He can, given the abundance of “official lives,” count on his readers to fill in the by then familiar historical details.

For the influence of Franciscan lyric poetry (and especially that of Iacopone da Todi) on Dante, see Alessandro Vettori (Poets of Divine Love: Franciscan Mystical Poetry of the Thirteenth Century [New York: Fordham University Press, 2004], pp. 120-22). And for its influence on a critic, writing on this canto, see Nardi (“Il Canto XI,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989 {1965}], pp. 313-29), who produced a footnoteless Franciscan lectura of this canto, showing the charm of imitation. Luciano Rossi (“Canto XI,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 170-72) follows up a suggestion of Lucia Battaglia Ricci (“Figure di contraddizione: Lettura dell'XI canto del Paradiso,” in Studi in onore di Emilio Bigi [Milan: Principato, 1997], p. 42) and argues that Dante's eleventh canto reflects Francis's Laudes creaturarum (see the note to Inf. I.117).

It seems possible that the author of the Commedia has, improbable as this may seem, gone beyond the prideful bearing that afflicted so much of his earlier work and attained a kind of humility (see Hollander [“Dante's Pride,” in Studi sul canone letterario del Trecento: Per Michelangelo Picone, a cura di J. Bartuschat and L. Rossi {Ravenna: Longo, 2003}, pp. 43-55]). For the crucial role of Francis in the development of that humility, particularly as counter-force to the arid intellectual pride that leads to heresy, 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]: 75-97).

Not content with making Poverty the “wife” of Jesus and then of Francis, Dante invents her presence in classical epic, adding her to the participants in that scene in Lucan (Phars. V.515-531) in which Caesar's bellowing, bullying manner cannot impress the poverty-stricken fisherman, Amyclas (see Dante's earlier treatment, without mention of Lady Poverty, in Convivio IV.xiii.12), not evincing fear because he has nothing of which to be robbed.

Occasionally, a reader (e.g., Carlo Grabher, comm. to vv. 64-75) complains that this bit of business seems overly cerebral (along with the next exemplum, the presence of Poverty on the cross with Jesus). It surely reveals the high regard Dante held for Lucan's text (scriptura paganorum [the scripture of the pagans] – see the note to Par. I.16-18), not only putting a moment from its narrative alongside one from the Bible (a familiar enough Dantean technique), but alongside one of the supreme moments in the Bible, Jesus' death on the cross; yet Grabher's point is well taken.

We probably should not attempt to analyze further the exact nature of Poverty's relationship with Amyclas within the metaphor, i.e., were they married, sexually involved, or “just friends”? The point is clearly that the fisherman's poverty freed him from fearing the all-powerful and jealous Julius. Nonetheless, we can make an exactly similar point about both Jesus and Francis; and so we are left with a nagging uncertainty about the way in which we should frame this apparently first relationship between this lady and a lover.

If Lady Poverty's loyalty to Amyclas had won her no new friends for more than a millennium, this result is all the more surprising in that she was the last one to solace Jesus in His final agony.

A much debated line, from the earliest days to the present. Is the verb in this line pianse (wept), as Petrocchi has decided, or is it salse (climbed), as Benvenuto da Imola insisted (comm. to vv. 70-72)? Evidently, the shocking and otherwise unheard-of act that is portrayed if the reader accepts the second option has kept some commentators on the side of the version of this verse contained in the Codice cassinese, in which we find pianse. As always, we are constrained (as we should be) by our decision to follow Petrocchi's text; on this occasion we would have gladly been governed by Benvenuto's reading of the line.

Thomas is concerned lest he had allowed his speech to become chiuso (dark, unclear) and we consequently not understand of whom and of what he spoke, thus reflecting his characterization (vv. 22-24) of his figurative speech in the previous canto (most specifically Par. X.96, his metaphor of fattening sheep, on which he has been expanding here) as not being aperta (clear). Once again one may witness, behind the text, Dante's desire to deal with Thomas's attacks on the unreliable nature of poetic speech (see Hollander [“Dante Theologus-Poeta,” Dante Studies 94 {1976}: 91-136]).

Finally we hear the name of this hero of the religious life. Ernesto Trucchi (comm. to vv. 55-57) revives the account of a certain preacher, named Chalippe, who, in town to address the faithful of Lucca during the Lenten observances of 1689, was shown names engraved in stone by a canon of Lucca named Moriconi. These were two Luccan brothers, one of whom, Bernardo Moriconi, left his native city and settled in Assisi. His son, Pietro (Bernardone, after his father) Moriconi, married a noblewoman by the name of Pica Bourlement. In 1181 they had a son, baptized (at the mother's instigation, since the father was away at the time) as Giovanni. Upon his return to Assisi, Pietro Bernardone was furious, since he had wanted his son to bear the name of Francesco (the adjective for “French” in Italian) to honor his own pleasure in association with France, the country where he had made his fortune as a merchant. Accordingly, the day of the boy's confirmation, Pietro had his name changed. And that, apparently, is how Francesco d'Assisi got his name.

See Bruno Porcelli (“Numeri e nomi nei canti danteschi del sole,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 117 [2000]: 1-5) for a discussion of the word concordia (harmony) as a key to understanding the cantos of the Sun.

Indeed, the growing love between Francis and his lady, Poverty, is a form of concordia developed out of apparent discord: the first description of poverty as something, like death, that no one willingly welcomes.

The first followers of Francis, those who were eventually gathered into the Order of Friars Minor (so called by Francis in his first Rule, indicating their humility, i.e,, they were “lesser brothers”), are now presented: Bernard of Quintavalle (a fellow townsman of Assisi, also from a wealthy family, who was so impressed by Francis's actions that he sold all his possessions in benefit of the poor and became his first follower; Francis considered Bernard his “first born”); Egidio (or Giles) and Silvester, both also of Assisi (the first was also among the earliest of Francis's followers and lived until 1262; Silvester was already a priest, who, when he had a dream in which Francis killed a dragon menacing the city, he joined the group; he died ca. 1240).

The sensuous delights of going barefoot are portrayed as the freedom of the soul in unstinting love of Christ. We note that the heat increases in these lines: Bernard is described with a past definite (si scalzò) as having taken his shoes off, but then the verb is repeated in the present tense (scalzasi) for Giles and Silvester. Those uses of the “historical present” intensify the feeling of liberation as, one by one, Francis's followers begin also to fall in love with this ugly woman.

The adjective ferace (literally, fertile, fecund), a hapax in the poem (as is, more surprisingly, the parallel adjective that precedes it, ignota [unknown]), contrasts with the notion of ordinary life, based as it is in acquiring wealth and possessions, not in living one's faith. Like its unique status among the words of the poem, its unusualness in ordinarily sterile human experience sets it apart.

On this verse, see Ferruccio Ulivi (“San Francesco e Dante,” Letture classensi 11 [1982]: 22), attacking Erich Auerbach (“St. Francis of Assisi in Dante's Commedia,” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, tr. C. Garvin [New York: Meridian Books, 1959 {1944}]) for not understanding how changed she is in Francis's eyes. But see the line itself (“si la sposa piace”): one can almost hear the suppressed assonantal “spiace” (displeases), the normal reaction of almost everyone who is forced to contemplate the visage of Poverty.

These lines summarize the result of the family struggle between Pietro Bernardone and his son, once known as Giovanni (Sigmund Freud must have enjoyed this passage): Francis, having rejected his own father, has himself become a father and a teacher; having rejected his own family, he has created a group of apostolic brethren.

The word capestro refers to the rope used to control horses or oxen, i.e., a halter, and was used as a belt by Francis and his first followers as an outward sign both of their inner control and of their humility before God. See its other two occurrences as an identifying mark of Franciscan friars, Inferno XXVII.92 and Paradiso XI.132. And see the note to Inferno XVI.106-108 for the word corda (cord), also used to designate the cincture of a garment worn by a member of a religious order (of its fourteen appearances in the poem, however, only two others refer to such a use [Inf. XXVII.67; Purg. VII.114]).

In 1214 Francis went to Rome and had an audience with Pope Innocent III, who approved the founding of the Order (he gave it its “first seal”). See Tozer's paraphrase (comm. to these verses): “On that occasion he was not shamefaced on account of the meanness of his origin or his contemptible appearance, but 'like a prince declared to Innocent his stern intention' of founding his Order: It is a little difficult to reconcile the statement about the meanness of his origin with the fact that his father was a well-to-do merchant; but this appears to be the meaning, for St. Bonaventura in his Life of St. Francis says that, when the epithets 'boorish' and 'mercenary' were applied to him, the Saint was wont to reply, that such reproaches were suitably addressed to Pietro Bernardone's son ('Talia enim licet audire filium Petri de Bernardone' [Legenda maior VI.2]).”

Emilio Pasquini (Dante e le figure del vero: La fabbrica della “Commedia” [Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2001], p. 241) points out that words in Dante's narrative at times are at radical odds with their counterparts in the various vitae of St. Francis, as here regalmente (regally) replaces the adverb humiliter (humbly); similarly, in verse 101, the Sultan's presence is described as being superba (prideful) while in the lives of Francis he is presented as offering a respectful welcome; or, in verse 106, Mount Alvernia is portrayed as a crudo sasso (rugged rock) rather than as the locus amoenus (pleasant place) of his biographers' accounts. What these changes commonly reflect is Dante's desire to make Francis's story more heroic than did his own biographers, who dwelled on his humility. As opposed to those who would only contrast Francis and Dominic, Dante matches them as “militant heroes” of the Church. See the note to Paradiso XII.35.

Dante suppresses reference (because he knows his reader will supply it?) to the narrative that appears not only in all the early lives of Francis, but which has a role in Giotto's representation of his life in the Upper Church at Assisi. Pope Innocent III at first was not favorable to Francis's petition and was planning to deny it. He had a dream, however, in which he saw Francis holding the tottering Church of St. John Lateran on his shoulders, and that won him over.

In fewer than ten years the order had grown from a relatively tiny band (those who had joined by the time Francis first went to Rome) into some five thousand members in 1223, by the time he goes there to appear before Pope Onorius III and receive the “second seal” of his mission from him.

The gente poverella (his followers, sworn to poverty) are to be distinguished from “ordinary” povera gente (poor people): Francis and his followers chose poverty, not necessarily having been born to it.

There are three basic constructions of the possible meaning of this contested line: Francis's life (1) is to be praised only for the greater glory of God, (2) were better sung in Heaven than by his (corrupt?) followers down there on earth, (3) were better sung in the Empyrean than (by me [Thomas]?) here in the Sun. Jacopo della Lana briefly and elliptically (comm. to vv. 96-99: “if only they kept to their leader's example”) suggested an early form of (2), while a version of (1) was proposed by Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 94-99) and another of (3) by Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 94-105). A softer version of (2) was proposed by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 94-99), who contrasts the worthy praise of Francis's followers on earth with the more exalted laudatory outpouring offered by the blessed in Heaven. Scartazzini (comm. to verse 96), in his familiar acerbic tone, dismisses all previous comments and then attempts what he considers (but see Benvenuto's gloss, referred to above, which includes the phrase “ad gloriam gratiae divinae”) a new interpretation when he understands the import of “in gloria del ciel” to be “to the glory of God,” considering Dante to have meant “alla gloria del ciel.” His is the first modern statement of (1), and has a good many followers, including Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse), even if Scartazzini is not ever mentioned. One of the strongest supporting arguments for (2) is found in Tozer (comm. to verse 96): “That this is the meaning is rendered probable by the following passage in an early life of St. Francis by Prudenzano, which Dante may well have seen: – 'Dai Serafini (tanta era stata la virtù del Santo) le Salmodie in onore di lui meglio e più degnamente sarebbersi cantate nella gloria del cielo [Tozer's italics], anzichè da' suoi frati degeneri in coro'” (citing Moore [Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante {Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 [1896]}, p. 86]). But see the perhaps even stronger objection to (2) lodged by Porena (comm. to verse 96): in these paired cantos a Dominican (Thomas) and a Franciscan (Bonaventure) inveigh against corruption in their own orders, and praise the founders of the other; thus for Thomas to declaim against Franciscans would be outside Dante's carefully laid out program. Sapegno argues (comm. to this verse) briefly and cogently against the first two hypotheses and makes a convincing case for the third, giving it its first complete statement: “The life of Francis is more worthy of being sung in the Empyrean by choruses of angels and of souls in bliss than it is of being described in pedestrian ways by me alone.” Thus, in this canto based on praise for Francis's humility, Thomas displays his own as well. However, the fact remains that none of the eight commentaries written after Sapegno's and present in the DDP makes reference to his hypothesis, except for Bosco/Reggio's, which is at the very least dubious about its worth, preferring, as we have seen, hypothesis (1).

The word archimandrita, a word formed out of a Greek ecclesiastical term meaning “chief shepherd” (from arch + mandra [“sheepfold”]), and thus the head of more than one monastic community, a hapax in the poem (but which appears, denoting the apostle Peter, in Mon. III.ix.17; it also is present, referring to the pope, in Epist. XI.13). This word is not, as some might expect, a Dantean coinage, but may have been found by him in the Magnae derivationes of Uguccione da Pisa, as Grandgent (comm. to vv. 97-99) seems to have been the first commentator to suggest.

Drawn by his hope for martyrdom, in imitation of Christ, Francis, accompanied by twelve of his followers (a number obviously meant to recall Jesus' twelve disciples), went to Egypt during a crusade. He insisted, at great risk to all of their lives, on trying to convert the Sultan, Malik al-Kamil, and preached before him to no avail. The Mohammedan, showing great restraint (and perhaps some political astuteness), sent Francis and his fellows back to the Christian army. Francis, seeing his plans for martyrdom during crusade foiled by his gracious adversary, returned to Italy.

Dante presents this episode out of sequence, since the Egyptian journey occurred in 1219, four years before his second trip to Rome, presented in vv. 94-99.

A year after his receiving the second seal from the pope, Francis receives his third and final seal on Mount Alvernia directly from Christ, the five stigmata that marked his body as they had marked His.

Francis's death receives more poetic space than any other element in Thomas's biography. His soul flies back to its Maker (this is one of the few specific notices we have that some of the saved bypass purgation in order to proceed directly to Heaven; see the note to Paradiso X.121-129).

The merchant in him, now totally redefined, does what all merchants are sure to do: make a will in favor of their surviving family or friends. Thus does Francis leave his “treasure” to his “family,” commending them to love his “wife,” Poverty, and commending his body to the dust, whence we all came. In good Franciscan fashion, he does not even want a plain coffin, only the earth itself.

Thomas's narrative has moved first along a vertical axis, beginning in the mountains above Assisi (vv. 43-45), and descending from there; then along a horizontal axis, as Francis moves around Italy and the Near East; and finally ending, once more on a mountain (Alvernia, verse 106), with his soul moving up still higher, to Heaven, while his body's latent movement is down, back into nothingness, without a containing bier (bara, the last word in Thomas's narrative), in the earth. He was canonized within two years of his death (1228).

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]: 94-95) points out that there is a Franciscan sort of magnanimity that is seen by Dante precisely as pusillo (meek), as St. Thomas also believed (ST II-II, q. 129, a. 3). Veglia might have referred to John Scott's book (Dante magnanimo; studi sulla “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1977]), which is a careful study of various forms of magnanimity in Dante. However, reversing a recent trend in Italian Dante scholarship, which is to pay attention to the work of foreign scholars, with the exception of E.G. Gardner's book (Dante and the Mystics [London: Dent, 1913]), Veglia does not mention in his 60 footnotes any work written in English (nor, with the exception of several French pieces, anyone who does not write in Italian).

Now our archimandrita, Francis (verse 99) is placed in relation to Thomas, a patrïarca. It is probably not accidental that Peter, referred to as archimandrita in Monarchia (see the note to verse 99), is mentioned here, as Dante obviously sees the first archimandrita and the second (Francis), as well as the new patrïarca (Dominic), as all playing a major role in the shaping of the Church, past and present, when the weakness and corruption in the papacy made the mendicant orders especially necessary in his eyes.

The whole metaphorical passage is developed in nautical terms, in which Peter is the first captain, followed by Francis and Dominic as co-captains, of the Church. She is portrayed as a merchant ship (surprisingly, perhaps, until one thinks of the commercial metaphors that are present in some of Jesus' parables), with a precious cargo in its hold, the true believers who (we must assume) will be numbered among the saved.

And now a switch in metaphor: Dominic's “sheep” are so hungry for new food that they have become widely scattered; the farther afield they go, the less milk they produce (i.e., the less their lives give evidence of having taken in the lessons of life under the Rule) when they finally return. And, if a few keep close to the shepherd, it does not take much cloth to have enough for their cowls. Thus does Thomas follow his praise of Francis with a denunciation of his own Order, as Bonaventure will do for his fellow Franciscans in the next canto (Par. XII.112-126).

For a consideration of the identical elements in these obviously paired cantos, see the note to Paradiso XII.142-145.

Heavily rhetorical (three “if” clauses in as many lines), the opening tercet of Thomas's conclusion draws Dante's attention back to his words in the previous canto (see the note to verse 139). Note that Thomas does not say, in the final clause, “what I said,” but “what was said,” in a painstakingly modest way of avoiding the use of the first-person.

Thomas reminds Dante that he has been answering the first of his unvoiced “doubts” (see vv. 22-25), caused by Thomas's phrasing in the last canto (Par. X.96).

The word “plant” (pianta) introduces still another metaphor, that of Dominic's Order as despoiled plant, the reason for which defoliation Thomas has just made plain (vv. 124-132).

A dispute found in the commentaries involves the understanding of the word corregger, whether it is a noun (correggér), formed from the noun correggia, the Dominican equivalent of the Franciscan capestro (see the note to verse 87), and meaning “he who wears the Dominican cincture,” and thus, here, Thomas (a formulation first proposed by Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 133-139], who, however, believed the noun referred to Dominic, not Thomas). This reading is probably more than a little forced (e.g., would the poet have made Thomas refer to himself as being seen by Dante? the word vedra' [= vedrai] is better understood, in both its parallel uses in this passage [see verse 137] as having the sense of “understand”), and most today, following the self-styled “first modern commentator,” Pompeo Venturi, who, in the eighteenth century, found an equivalent for the word corregger in “reprensione” (rebuke), think it is either a verb or an infinitive used as a verbal noun, meaning, in the first case, “correction” (we have translated it “rebuke”) and, in the second, “guidance.” And see Lombardi (comm. to vv. 138-139) for a return to Buti's interpretation. For his customary lengthy review (and also a return to Buti), see Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 138-139). However, see the nearly equally lengthy treatment offered by Campi (comm. to vv. 136-139), opting for Venturi's solution, which is much as our own. Since then, the basic disagreement lies between followers of Buti/Scartazzini and Venturi/Campi, with most who deal with the problem falling in behind Venturi/Campi.

Thomas, in good Thomistic fashion, rounds off his “gloss” on Paradiso X.96 by repeating the entire line here.

It is amusing to think that Dante's revenge on his major intellectual rival in the debate over the truth-telling capacity of poetry comes from making Thomas a commentator on Dante's poetry, a role that he himself, perhaps prodded by Thomas's attacks on his profession, felt called upon to play in his Epistle to Cangrande.