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See Professor Cook’s list of the passages, and references to Aristotle, in Mod. Lang. Notes 15 (1900). 256 (511, 512).

Conv. 2. 4. 1.

De Mon. 1. 4.

Par. 6. 103.

Purg. 5. 61.

Earliest Lives of Dante, tr. James R. Smith, p. 69.

See lib. 9, cap. 136; tr. Napier’s Florentine History, bk. 1, ch. 16; also Dinsmore, Aids to the Study of Dante, p. 61.

Scartazzini, A Companion to Dante, pp. 318 ff.

Latham, Letters 5, 6, 7.

De Mon. 2. 3.

Conv. 4. 3.

Par. 16. 1 ff.

De Mon. 1. 12. 3.

Par. 2. 58 ff.

Conv. 2. 14.

Conv. 4. 3. 3.

Letter 5. 2. 3.

Albert died May 1, 1308. Henry was elected November 27, 1308; entered Italy, October, 1311; received the iron crown of the Lombards at Milan on Epiphany, 1311; Dante’s letter to him April 16, 1311; died at Buonconvento, August 24, 1313.

Lowell has translated this:—

Bryce, chap. 15.

The Teachings of Dante, p. 56.

God is “miglior natura” in Purg. 16. 79: “To a greater power and a better nature, ye are free subjects.”

Par. 10. 28: “The greatest minister of nature, that stamps the world with the goodness of heaven.”

Par. 13. 79: “But if the burning love disposes and stamps the clear view of the prime virtue, all perfection is there acquired.”

Cf. S. T. 1. 66. 3; De Trinit. 3. 4.

Ps. 1. 3.

Matt. 25. 25.

Num. 17. 8.

1 Cor. 9. 24; cf. Phil. 3. 14.

James 1. 5. In Conv. 1. 8. 2 God is called the “Universal Benefactor.”

Conv. 3. 7. 2: “The Primal Goodness sendeth His bounties unto all things in an affluence.”

Conv. 4. 4. 1: “Wherefore, in order to put an end to these wars and their causes, the whole earth should be under a monarchy, that is, should be a single principality under one prince, who, possessing everything, and therefore incapable of further desire, would keep the kings content within the limits of their kingdoms, so that peace should abide among them.”

Each book of the De Mon. is likewise founded on the rock of a basic principle. See 2. 2; 3. 2.

Conv. 4. 15. 7: “The third infirmity in the minds of men is caused by levity of nature; for many have so light a fancy, that they fly from one thing to another in their reasoning, and before they have finished their syllogism have formed a conclusion, and from that conclusion have flown to another, and think they are arguing most subtly, while they have no principle to start from, and see nothing in their imagination that is really there.”

Par. 2. 124: “Regard me well, how I am going through this topic to the truth thou desirest.”

Conv. 4. 9. 2: “There are things which it [the reason] only considers and does not originate, . . . such as natural and supernatural things, i. e. laws and mathematics; and actions which it considers and performs by its own proper act, which are called rational, such as the arts of speech; and actions which it considers and executes in material outside of itself, as in the mechanical arts.”

“The word politia may be used either for a general form of government, such as monarchy or democracy; or for a concrete organ of government, such as some specific monarchy; or for some function of government as exercised by such an organ, i. e. the actual governing done by the monarch; or for the ideal goal and purpose of government, i. e. the right ordering of a state.” Wicksteed. It has seemed best to translate this oft-recurring word in its various forms by “government,” “governmental,” etc.

The identification of cause and end, or effect, is complete in Letter 11. 33: “When the Source or First, which is God, hath been found, there is nothing to be sought beyond (since He is the Alpha and Omega, which is the Beginning and the End).” See note 1, De Mon. 1. 13. For this notion of cause and effect see also Arist. Metaphys. 1, and De Causis.

Eth. 1. 7. 21: “For the principle seems to be more than half the whole.” Dante almost without exception refers to Aristotle as “the Philosopher.” In Conv. 3. 5. 5 he is “That glorious Philosopher to whom Nature has most completely revealed her secrets;” “The master of human reason,” Conv. 4. 2. 7; “That master of philosophers,” Conv. 4. 8. 5; “The master of those who know,” Inf. 4. 131. For Dante’s relation to Aristotle see Moore, Studies in Dante, Vol. 1. pp. 92-156. For the translations of Aristotle which he used, l. c. pp. 305-318. Throughout the De Mon. the Ethics are called “the writings to Nicomachus,” a title given them because they had been addressed by the philosopher to his son of that name.

De Caelo 1. 4. Dante uses a singular verb with two coördinate subjects, thus, “Deus et natura facit.” So infra, 1. 11. 1.

Conv. 3. 15. 4: “Nature would have made it in vain, because it would have been created without any end.”

Par. 8. 97: “The Good which sets in revolution and contents all the realm thou art scaling makes its foresight to be virtue in these great bodies. And not only the natures are foreseen in this mind which is of itself perfect, but they together with their preservation. Wherefore whatsoever this bow discharges falls disposed to a foreseen end, just as a thing aimed right upon its mark. If this were not so, the heaven where thou journeyest would so produce its effects that they would not be an artist’s works, but ruins. And this cannot be, if the intellects which move these stars are not maimed and maimed the First, in that He has not perfected them. . . . I see it is impossible for nature, in that which is necessary, to fail.”

Cf. De Mon. 2. 7. 1; 3. 15. 1; 1. 10. 1.

Pol. 1. 2. 5-8.

Conv. 4. 4. 1: “The radical foundation of imperial majesty according to the truth is the necessity of human society, which is ordained to one end, that is a happy life; to which no one is capable of attaining without the aid of others, because man has many needs, which one person alone is unable to satisfy.”

Conv. 3. 3. 1: “Simple bodies, the elements, have a natural love for their own place; wherefore earth always falls toward the centre, and fire is drawn toward the circumference above.”

Conv. 3. 3. 2: “The primary composed bodies, such as minerals.” Cf. Par. 7. 124: “I see the air, and I see the fire, the earth, and the water and all their combinations come to destruction and endure but a little.”

Conv. 3. 3. 3: “Plants, which are the first of animate things.”

Conv. 3. 2. 3: “The sensitive soul is found without the rational, as in beasts and birds and fishes.”

For the origin of the idea see De Anima 3; Metaphys. 12; Ethics 1. 7. 12: “The work of man is an energy of soul according to reason. Man’s chief good is an energy of soul according to virtue.” For the mediaeval explanation, S. T. 1. 154. 4, and 1. 79. 1, 2, 10.

“Intellectus possibilis” or “passibilis,” and “intellectus agens,” that is, the passive, apprehending intellect, and the active intelligence, are the two intellects of man. Cf. De Mon. 1. 16. The emphasis here is on the fact that at no given time is the potentiality of man’s intellect realized.

Dante discusses the hierarchies, Conv. 2. 5, 6, and Par. 28, 29. Cf. S. T. 1. 54-59. Conv. 2. 5. 1: “These are substances separate from matter, that is intelligences, whom the common people call angels;” l. c. 2. 5. 3: “Their intellect is one and perpetual;” 4. 19. 2: “Human nobility, as far as the variety of its fruits is considered, excels that of the angels, although the angelic may be more divine in its unity.” That is, while the angelic nature is an uninterrupted realization of the knowledge of which each order of these beings is capable, man always approximates through a variety of ways to the knowledge that is his heritage.

Par. 29. 70: “But whereas on earth through your schools it is taught that the angelic nature is such as understands and remembers and wills, . . . the truth is there below confused.” Dante’s actus or formus is typified in angelic natures, his materia or potentia in matter, while both form and matter are found in created things.

Averroës was an Arabian philosopher of the twelfth century, and author of the famous commentary upon Aristotle here alluded to. He is mentioned in Conv. 4. 13. 3, and placed among the great thinkers in Limbo, Inf. 4. 144.

“Ad libr. tertium Ed. Venet. 1552, p. 164.” Witte.

Metaphys. 1. 1: “An art comes into being when, out of many conceptions of experience, one universal opinion is evolved with respect to similar cases.”

Conv. 3. 15. 2: “In this gaze or contemplation alone is human perfection to be gained, that is, the perfection of the reason, on which, as on its most important part, all our being depends; and all our other actions, feelings, nourishment—all exist for it alone, and it exists for itself and not for others.” L. c. 4. 4. 1: “Peace should abide among them, . . . which done, man lives happily, for which end he was born.” L. c. 4. 17. 16: “We must know that we can have two kinds of happiness in this life, according to two different ways, one good, one best, which lead us thereto; one is the active life, and the other the contemplative.” L. c. 4. 22. 5-10: “The use of the mind is double, that is, practical and speculative, and both are delightful; although that of contemplation is most so. . . . Its practical use is to act through us virtuously, that is, righteously by temperance, fortitude, and justice; the speculative is not to operate actively in us, but to consider the works of God and of nature; and the one and the other make up our beatitude and supreme happiness.”

Purg. 27. 93, Dante dreams of Leah and Rachael, who typify the contemplative and active life; “to see satisfies her, but me to work.”

Purg. 28 realizes the dream of the active life in the person of Matilda, and Purg. 30 that of the contemplative in the person of Beatrice. It is for abandoning the contemplative life, and “following false images of good,” that Beatrice reproves Dante, Purg. 30. 131.

Pol. 1. 2. 2: “By nature too some beings command, and others obey, for the sake of mutual safety; for a being endowed with discernment and forethought is by nature the superior and governor.”

“Sedendo et quiescendo.” Dante often used the figure of the seated person to portray the life of contemplation.

S. T. 2-2. 182. 2: “Contemplative life consists in a certain stillness and rest according to the text, ‘Be still, and know that I am God,’ ” Ps. 46. 10. Also S. T. 1-2. 3. 4, 5.

Conv. 4. 17. 16: “And Mary . . . sitting at the feet of Christ, took no heed to the service of the house. . . . For if we explain this morally, our Lord wished thereby to show us that the contemplative life is the best, although the active life is good.” L. c. 1. 1. 4: “Blessed are the few that are seated at the table where the bread of the angels is eaten.”

Purg. 27. 105: “My sister Rachel never is drawn from her mirror, and sits all day.”

Eccles. 38. 25 (Vulg.): “The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise.”

Ps. 8. 6; cf. Heb. 2. 7. Quoted Conv. 4. 19. 3.

Luke 2. 14.

Luke 24. 36; John 20. 21, 26.

Rom. 1. 7.

Some of Dante’s most eloquent exhortations in prose and some of the most perfect music of his verse are touching that peace which he knew should make man happy on earth and blessed in heaven, that peace which he went to seek “from world to world,” and which he found at last in complete obedience to the will of God.

Purg. 3. 74: Virgil conjures the spirits “By that peace which I think is awaited by you all.”

Purg. 5. 61: Dante here tells of “that peace, which makes me, following the feet of a guide thus fashioned, seek it from world to world.”

Purg. 10. 34: “The angel that came on earth with the decree of the many years wept-for peace . . . opened Heaven from its long interdict.”

Purg. 11. 7: “Let the peace of thy kingdom come to us.”

Purg. 21. 13: “My brethren, God give you peace,” is the greeting of Statius.

Purg. 28. 91: “The highest Good, which does only its own pleasure, made the man good and for good, and gave him this place for an earnest to him of eternal peace.”

Purg. 30. 7: “That truthful folk . . . turned them to the car as to their peace.”

Par. 2. 112: “Within the heaven of the divine peace revolves a body in whose virtue lies the being of all that is contained in it.”

Par. 3. 85: “In His will is our peace.”

Par. 27. 8: “A life complete of joy and peace.”

Par. 30. 100: “Light is there on high, which makes visible the Creator to that creation which only in seeing Him has its peace.”

Par. 31. 110: St. Bernard “in this world by contemplation tasted of that peace.”

Par. 33. 1: “Virgin Mother . . . in thy womb was rekindled the Love, through whose warmth in the eternal peace this flower has thus sprung.”

Pol. 1. 5. 3: “Whatsoever is composed of many parts, which together make up one whole, . . . shows the marks of some one thing governing and another thing governed.”

Conv. 4. 4. 2: “And with these reasons we may compare the words of the Philosopher, when he says in the Politics that when many things are ordained for one purpose, one of them should be governor or ruler, and all others should be governed or ruled.”

For Dante’s idea of the deference due to authority, philosophical and imperial, see Conv. 4. 8. 9.

Pol. 1. 2. 6.

Homer, Od. 9. 114, quoted by Arist. Pol. 1. 2. 6.

“Politia obliqua.”

Luke 11. 17.

Conv. 4. 4. 2: “Even as we see a ship, where her divers duties and their divers purposes are ordained for one end, that is, to bring her by a safe course to the desired haven, where, as each officer performs his own duty with regard to the proper end, so there is one person who considers all these, and adapts them all to the final end, and this one is the pilot whose voice all must obey. And this we see in religious bodies, and in armies, and in all things, which, as we have said, are ordained for some one purpose.”

Conv. 4. 29. 5: “Every whole is made up of its parts, . . . and what is said of a part, in the same way may be said of a whole.”

Par. 1. 103: “All things whatsoever have an order among themselves; and this is form, which makes the universe in the likeness of God. Here the created beings on high see the traces of eternal goodness, which is the end whereunto the rule aforesaid has been made.”

Par. 10. 3: “The first and unspeakable Goodness made all that revolves in mind or in place with such order that he who observes this cannot be without tasting of Him.”

Par. 29. 31: “Order and structure were concrete in the substances.”

Cf. De Mon. 2. 7. 1, and note 3.

S. T. 1. 47. 3: “Ipse ordo in rebus sic a Deo creatis existens unitatem mundi manifestat. Mundus enim iste unus dicitur unitate ordinis, secundum quod quaedam ad alia ordinantur. Quaecumque autem sunt a Deo, ordinem habent ad invicem et ad ipsum Deum.”

Conv. 4. 4. 1: “The whole earth should be under one prince, who . . . would keep the kings content within the limits of their kingdoms, so that peace should abide among them, wherein the cities should repose, and in this repose the neighbors should love one another, and in this love the families should supply all their wants; which done, man lives happily; for which end he was born.”

Conv. 4. 4. 2: “And this office, for reason of its excellence, is called Empire, without any qualification, because it is the government of all governments. And so he who holds the office is called emperor, because he is a law to all and must be obeyed by all, and all others take their force and authority from him. And thus it is evident that the imperial majesty and authority is the highest in human society.”

Dante applies to the Deity the names denoting governmental supremacy, not only in the De Mon. but elsewhere. See Conv. 2. 6. 1; 2. 16. 6; “Imperadore dell’ universo;” also Emperor, Inf. 1. 124; Par. 12. 40, etc.; De Mon. 3. 16. 1.

Conv. 3. 14. 1: “The sun . . . sending his rays here below, makes all things to resemble his own brightness, as far as they, of their own nature, are capable of receiving light. Thus . . . God brings this love to His own likeness, in so far as it is possible for it to resemble Him.”

Par. 1. 104: “Form . . . makes the universe in the likeness of God.” Cf. De Mon. 2. 2. 2, and note 3.

Gen. 1. 26. Used in Conv. 4. 12. 6: “God is the source of our soul and has made it like unto Himself (as it is written, ‘Let us make man in our image and likeness’).”

Eth. 10. 8. 13: “The energy of the deity, as it surpasses all others in blessedness, must be contemplative: and therefore, of human energies, that which is nearest allied to this must be the happiest.”

Deut. 6. 4.

Conv. 4. 24. 8: “All children look more closely to the paternal footprints than any others.”

Phys. 2. 2: “Homo hominem generat ex materia et sol,” Witte quotes from an old Latin version. Dante quotes three times in De Mon. from De Naturali Auditu, as he calls the Physics of Aristotle. Cf. infra, 2. 7. 3; 3. 15. 2.

Inf. 11. 97: “Philosophy . . . to whoso looks narrowly on her, notes, not in one place only, how nature takes her course from the understanding of God, and from His workmanship; and if thou well observe thy Physics, thou wilt find after not many pages, that your workmanship, as far as it can, follows her as the learner does the master, so that your workmanship is as it were second in descent from God.”

The “primum mobile” is the ninth heaven, and the source of motion in the other eight movable heavens. The heavens are treated of in Conv. 2. 3-6; the “primum mobile” in 2. 4. 1: “The fervent longing of all its parts to be united to those of this tenth and most divine heaven, makes it revolve with so much desire that its velocity is almost incomprehensible.” Dante’s theory of motion is to some extent explained in Letter 11. 26: “Everything that moveth hath some defect, and hath not its whole being complete in itself.”

Conv. 2. 15. 5: “The said heaven directs by its movements the daily revolution of all the others, by which they all daily receive and transmit here below the virtue of all their parts.”

Par. 27. 106: “The nature of the world that holds the centre quiet, and moves all else around, begins hence as from its starting-point. And this heaven has no other Where than in the mind of God, in which is kindled the love that turns it and the virtue that it showers down. Light and love comprehend it with one circle, as it does the rest; and of that girth He only who girt it is the intelligence. Its movement is not marked out by any other, the others are measured by it.” Cf. Par. 1. 76, where God is called “Love who orderest the heavens,” and De Mon. 2. 2. 3 note.

Par. 28. 70: “The one which sweeps along with it the universe sublime.”

De Cons. Philos. 2. Metr. 8. ll. 28-30. See pp. 282-288 of Moore’s Studies, Vol. 1, for an account of Dante’s relation to Boethius, one of his “favorite authors.”

“Sine proprio perfectivo.”

De Anima 3. 9. This idea Dante often repeats. See infra, 2. 7. 2, and 3. 15. 1.

Metaphys. 11. 10, at the end. Moore points out the original source as Homer, Il. 2. 204.

Par. 20. 76: “Such seemed to me the image of the imprint of the eternal pleasure, according to its desire for which each thing becomes what sort it is.”

Ecl. 4. 6. Statius in his eulogy of Virgil, Purg. 22. 70, paraphrases this passage of the Fourth Eclogue: “The world renews itself; Justice returns, and the first age of man; and a new progeny descends from Heaven.” Use is made of the same in Letter 7. 1.

One of the books of the Convito, which was never written, was to have been devoted to this “moral virtue.” Conv. 1. 12. 4: “Of this subject I shall treat fully in the fourteenth book.” So Dante affirms again, l. c. 4. 27. 5: “Justice will be treated of in the last book but one of this volume.” The word “justitia,” used in the De Mon. according to the definition here of “regula sive rectitudo,” is employed elsewhere by Dante with varying meanings, ranging even to a synonym of perfect goodness and God Himself.

Conv. 4. 17. 13: “The eleventh [moral virtue] is Justice, which disposes us to love and practice righteousness in all things.”

Inf. 29. 56: “Justice that cannot err” punishes those in hell. In Purg. 19. 77 the sufferings endured “both hope and justice make less hard.” Again in Purg. 16. 71, it is “Justice to have for good joy, and for evil woe.”

Par. 4. 67: “That our justice should appear unjust in the eyes of mortals is argument of faith and pertains not to heretic depravity.”

Par. 6. 103: “Let the Ghibellines . . . work their arts under another ensign, for he ever follows that amiss who separates justice and it.” L. c. 121: “The living justice makes our affection sweet within us, so that it can never be wrested to any unrighteousness.”

Par. 18. 115: “O sweet star, what manner and what number of what gems showed me that our justice is an effect of the heaven wherein thou art set.” In this same canto Dante sees the motto of the empire, 90 ff., “Diligite justitiam . . . qui judicatis terram,” in the words which open the Book of Wisdom. For Thomas Aquinas on Justice, see S. T. 2-2. 57. 1, 58. 1.

Forms may be substantial or accidental; substantial, when they give things being or essence; accidental, when they give things qualities or attributes. Whiteness is an accidental form which is intrinsically absolute. More or less whiteness is only possible when some other accidental form is mixed with it. Cf. infra, par. 3.

Gilbertus Porretanus was a scholastic logician, a theologian, and Bishop of Poitiers, a pupil of Bernard of Chartres and of Anselm of Laon. His chief logical work was De Sex Principiis, and it gave him the name by which Dante designates him. A criticism of the ten Aristotelian Categories, it drew a distinction between the first four (formae inhaerentes), substance, quality, quantity, and relation, and the other six (formae assistentes), and it became one of the most popular works in the schools.

Dante uses “subject” to mean either an entity or an underlying element.

Eth. 5. 1. 12.

The sun and moon are again referred to in this way, Par. 29. 1: “When both the children of Latona, brooded over by the Ram and Scales, together make of the horizon a belt.”

Par. 15. 1: Into “a benign will . . . is dissolved always the love which inspires righteously, as evil concupiscence is unto the unjust will.”

Eth. 5. 1. 15, 17, 20.

Analyt. Prior. 1. 5. The second figure is characterized by having the common term (A in this case) in the predicate, both in the major and minor premise, and by having one premise positive and one negative.

That is, Justice is most powerful in the world when present in the most powerful and willing subject.

Eth. 5. 2. 5.

Covetousness, cupidity, or avarice, the desire for other than that which is the intention of God, Dante makes the root of every wrong. Individual self-seeking destroys the form, or order, of the universe. It is related to the evil of multiplicity treated of in De Mon. 1. 15. Those guilty of avarice were punished in the fourth circle of Inferno, canto 7; Simoniacs in the eighth circle, Malebolge, canto 19; and usurers just above in the seventh circle, Inf. 17.

Inf. 12. 49: “O blind covetousness! O foolish wrath! that dost so spur us in our short life, and afterward in the life eternal dost in such evil wise steep us!” Purg. 19. 121; 22. 23, 34.

Purg. 20. 82: “O avarice, what canst thou do more with us, since thou hast so drawn my race to thee that it cares not for its own flesh!”

Par. 27. 121-124: “O covetousness, which dost so whelm mortals under thee that none has power to draw his eyes forth of thy waves! Well flowers in men their wills; but the rain unbroken turns to sloes the true plums.”

Par. 30. 138: Henry came before his time to Italy because “The blind covetousness which bewitches you has made you like the child who is dying of hunger and drives away his nurse.”

For further reference to cupidity, see note, Aquinas Ethicus, Vol. 2. p. 396. Rickaby.

Rhetoric 1. 1. 7. Conv. 4. 4. 1: “The whole earth . . . should be under one prince, . . . possessing everything, and therefore incapable of further desire.”

Aen. 1. 287: “Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris.”

In the letter to Henry VII, Letter 5. 3, the idea is amplified: “The power of the Romans is limited neither by the confines of Italy, nor by the shores of three-horned Europe. For although through violence its dominions may have been narrowed on all sides, none the less, since it extends to the waves of Amphitrite by inviolable right, it barely deigns to be girded round about by the ineffectual billows of the ocean. For to us it was written: ‘Of illustrious origin shall Trojan Caesar be born: his empire shall end with the ocean, his fame with the stars.’ ”

“Perseitate hominum.” Witte instances the same word, Ockham, Quatuor Libros Senten. 1. 2. 4: “Omnis propositio, in qua praedicatur passio de suo subiecto cum nomine perseitatis, esset falsa, quodest absurdum.” Ducange defines it thus: “Perseitas hominum = facultas per se subsistandi.”

Purg. 15. 71: “In proportion as charity extends, increases upon it the eternal goodness.”

Par. 3. 43: “Our charity locks not its doors upon a just wish.” L. c. 70: “A virtue of charity sets at rest our will, which makes us wish that only which we have.”

Conv. 1. 12. 2: “Proximity and goodness are the causes that engender love.”

Conv. 3. 10. 1: “The closer the thing desired comes to him who desires it, the greater the desire is.”

Purg. 27. 109: “And already, through the brightness before the light, which arises the more grateful to pilgrims, as on their return they lodge less far away.”

More, Utopia: “The king . . . should love his people, and be loved of them; . . . he should live among them, govern them gently.”

De Causis, Lect. 1. This pseudo-Aristotelian treatise, probably of Arabic origin, was regarded with great reverence in the Middle Ages, and commentaries were written upon it by Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Aegidius Romanus. Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, Vol. 3. pp. 8-10.

Conv. 4. 4. 3: “Before the coming of the aforesaid officer [the emperor] no one had at heart the good of all.” Cf. l. c. 4. 5. 3.

Utopia: “A prince ought to take more care of his people’s happiness than of his own, as a shepherd is to take more care of his flock than of himself.”

In Par. 18 occurs what Butler calls the “apotheosis of the personified empire,” and there its relation to justice is made plain. See note 2 in the present chapter of De Mon.

That “Justice is preëminent only under a Monarch.”

Freedom of the will is discussed in Par. 5. 19 ff.

Moore says that this thought is repeated more than twenty times in Aristotle, e. g. Analyt. Prior. 2. 21; Magna Moral. 1. 1: “It would be absurd if a man wishing to prove that the angles of a triangle were equal to two right angles assumed that the soul is immortal.”

Conv. 1. 12. 4: “Although all virtue is lovable in man, that is most so which is most peculiarly human; and this is justice which belongs only to the reason or intellect, that is, the will.”

Conv. 4. 9. 3: “There are actions . . . which our reason considers as within the province of the will, such as to offend or to help; . . . and these are entirely under the control of our will, and therefore from them are we called good or wicked, because they are all our own.”

Conv. 4. 18. 1: “All the moral virtues come from one principle, which is a good and habitual choice.”

Purg. 18. 19: “The mind which is created ready to love is quick to move to everything which pleases it so soon as by the pleasure it is aroused to action. Your apprehensive power draws an intention from an essence which speaks true, and displays it within you, so that it makes the mind turn to that.”

Par. 13. 118: “It occurs that oftentimes the current opinion swerves in a false direction, and afterwards the desire binds the understanding.”

Cf. supra, 1. 3. 2, and note 10. Conv. 2. 6. 7: “These motive powers guide by their thought alone the revolutions over which each one presides.”

Conv. 2. 9. 3: “The soul . . . having left it [the body], it endures forever in a nature more than human.”

Conv. 2. 1. 4: “The soul, in forsaking its sins, becomes holy and free in its powers.” So Virgil assures Dante when he has reached the Earthly Paradise, Purg. 27. 140: “Await no more my word or my sign; free, right, and sound is thy judgment, and it were a fault not to act according to its thought, wherefore, thee over thyself I crown and mitre.”

And of children, Par. 32. 40: “Spirits set free before that they had true power of choice.”

Purg. 18. 55: “Man knows not whence comes the understanding of the first cognitions, and the affection of the first objects of appetite, for they are in you, as in the bee the desire of making its honey; and this first volition admits not desert of praise or blame. Now, whereas about this every other gathers itself, there is innate in you the faculty which counsels, and which should hold the threshold of assent. This is the principle whereto occasion of desert in you is attracted, according as it gathers up and winnows out good or guilty love. They who in reasoning have gone to the foundation have taken note of that innate liberty, wherefore they have left morality to the world. Whence let us lay down that of necessity arises every love which kindles itself in you; of keeping it in check the power is in you. The noble faculty Beatrice understands for free will.”

Par. 5. 19: “The greatest gift which God of His bounty made in creating, and the most conformed to His goodness, and that which He most values, was the freedom of the will, wherewith the creatures that have intelligence all, and they only, were and are endowed.” Giuliani says that some MSS. add to these lines of the De Mon., “sicut in Paradiso comediae jam dixi.” Whatever scribe originally inserted them found their pronounced relationship to Par. 5. 19.

See also S. T. 1. 59. 3: “Only that which has intellect can act by free judgment; . . . wherever intellect is, there is judgment.”

Metaphys. 1. 2. This treatise Dante calls de simpliciter Ente, here and 1. 13. 1; 1. 15. 1; 3. 14. 4, but Prima Philosophia in 3. 12. 1.

Conv. 3. 14. 3: “The noble and intellectual soul, free in her special power, which is reason; . . . and the Philosopher says in the first of the Metaphysics, that that thing is free which exists for itself and not for another.”

“Crooked policies;” in the Latin, “politiae obliquae.”

Reference to political servitude is common in Dante, e. g. Purg. 6. 76: “Ah Italy! thou slave, hostel of woe!”

In Pol. 3. 7. 2-5, we find: “A tyranny is a monarchy where the good of one man only is the object of government, an oligarchy considers only the rich, and a democracy only the poor, but no one of them has the common good of all in view.”

The word “politizant,” occurring here, Witte defines as “regnare et civitati praeesse.” Wicksteed translates it “have a real policy.” I find that Milton used an Anglicized form of the word in his Reformation in England, 2: “Let me not for fear of a scarecrow, or else through hatred to be reformed, stand hankering and politizing, when God with spread hands testifies to us.” So I translate the word “play at politics.”

Pol. 3. 4. 3, 4.

“It is impossible to conceive a people without a prince, but not a prince without a people.” In his essay on Dante Lowell quotes this saying of Calvin’s.

Pol. 4. 1. 9.

Conv. 3. 2. 2: “Each effect contains something of the nature of its cause.” L. c. 3. 14. 1: “For the virtue of one thing to descend upon another, that other thing must be brought to the first one’s likeness; as we see plainly in all natural agencies, whose descending upon passive things brings them to resemble those agencies in so far as they are capable of so doing.” So in Conv. 4. 22. 4. And see note 5, De Mon. 1. 2.

Conv. 2. 9. 2: “Every cause loves its effect.”

Metaphys. 8. 8. See Par. 29. 34: “Pure potency held the lowest place; in the midst clasped potency with act such a withe as never is untwisted.” S. T. 1. 54-59; 1-2. 3. 2. Also note 10, De Mon. 1. 3.

Gen. 27. 22: “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” Cf. De Mon. 2. 12. 5.

Eth. 10. 1. 3: “Arguments about matters of feeling and action are less convincing than facts.”

Ps. 50. 16. Note that the “sinner” may yet be “holiest of kings” in the following paragraph. See article on David, Toynbee’s Dante Dictionary.

Claudius Galen (130-200 ad), the celebrated physician of Pergamum in Asia, was up to the sixteenth century the most famous physician of antiquity with the exception of Hippocrates. Some eighty-three treatises, medical and philosophical, written by him are still extant. See Inf. 4. 143. The quotation about the difficulty of unlearning false knowledge is from De Cognoscendis Animi Morbis, c. 10.

De Mon. 1. 11. 5.

Ps. 72. 1. Par. 13. 94: “I have not so spoken that thou canst not well see that he was a king who asked wisdom, to the end that he might be a competent king.”

Moore shows that the basic idea of this chapter is found in many places in Aristotle: De Part. Anim. 3. 4; Phys. 7. 6, etc. This idea reappears in Quaestio de Aqua et Terra 13. 34 (Oxford ed.): “Quia quod potest fieri per unum, melius est quod fiat per unum quam per plura.”

Another common Aristotelian notion. See De Caelo 1. 4; De Gen. Anim. 2. 6.

“Equity.” Dante writes ἐπιείχειαν—one of the Greek words that found their way into mediaeval translations of Aristotle, and were “cruelly mauled by the scribes,” says Wicksteed. The reference is to Eth. 5. 10: “And this is the nature of the equitable, that it is the correction of law, wherever it is defective owing to its universality.”

The Scythians were vaguely understood to be the nomad tribes north of the Black Sea and the Caspian. Dante speaks of them again, De Mon. 2. 9. 3; 3. 3. 1.

Ptolemy’s κλίματα or climates were belts of the earth’s surface, divided by lines parallel to the equator. The length of day determined the position of each terrestrial climate, each having half an hour more than the preceding one. The seven climates of the northern hemisphere are described by Alfraganus in his Elementa Astronomica. The system of climates developed into that of the present parallels of latitude. Our word “climate” came from the application of a place name to the temperature of the region. See Toynbee’s Dict. s. v. “Garamantes.” Cf. Conv. 3. 5. 8.

The tribes south of the Great Desert were known as the Garamantes. See Lucan, Phar. 4. 334; 9. 369. In Conv. 3. 5. 8 they are described as men “who go almost always naked.”

Exod. 18. 17-26; Deut. 1. 10-18. Moses as lawgiver is frequently quoted in this treatise on Monarchy: 2. 4. 1; 2. 13. 2; 3. 5. 1, etc. Moses is honored together with Samuel and John in Par. 4. 29 as those who “have most part in God.”

“Priority” translates the Latin word prius. See Arist. Categ. 12. Moore. Conv. 3. 2. 2: “The first of all things is being, and before it is nothing.”

Metaphys. 1. 5.

The central thought in the Pythagorean philosophy is number, it being the principle and essence of everything. The theory of opposites gave rise to the Pythagorean συστοιχία, parallel tables, or correlations:—

See the article on Pythagoras in Toynbee, Studies, pp. 87-96. Conv. 3. 11. 2: “In the time of Numa Pompilius . . . there lived a most noble philosopher, called Pythagoras.”

Metaphys. as in note 2. Cf. Conv. 2. 14. 10: “Pythagoras . . . puts odd and even as the principles of natural things, considering all things as number.”

The unity of goodness is one of the cardinal points in Dante’s philosophy. It is his theory of form and his theory of justice. So the poet of the Divine Comedy makes God in the Empyrean visualized unity, as Satan in Hell is visualized multiplicity. Par. 28. 16: “I saw a point which radiated light so keen that the sight which it fires must needs close itself. . . . From that point depends the heaven and all nature.”

Par. 33. 85: “I saw how there enters, bound with love in one volume, that which is distributed through the universe; substance and accident and their fashion, as though fused together in such wise that that which I tell of is one single light. The universal form of this knot I believe I saw.” See Inf. 34. 37 for the description of Satan.

Ps. 4. 7.

Eth. 2. 1. 2: “The stone which by nature goes downward could never be accustomed to go upward, . . . nor could fire be accustomed to burn downward.”

Conv. 3. 3. 1: “Everything . . . has its special love; as simple bodies have a natural love for their own place; wherefore earth always falls toward the centre, and fire is drawn toward the circumference above.”

Inf. 32. 73: “We were going toward the centre, to which all gravity is collected.” L. c. 34. 110: “The point to the which from every part the weights are drawn.”

Purg. 18. 28: “As the fire moves on high, by reason of its form, so . . . the mind seized enters into desire, which is a motion of the spirit.” Also Purg. 32. 109.

Par. 1. 115: “This bears away the fire toward the moon; this is the motive power in the hearts of men; this binds the earth together and makes it one.” Cf. Par. 1. 133, 141; 4. 77; 23. 42.

The species of good which anything apprehends is its form, that principle which makes it what it is. In this case the volitional power of willing is the material or matter, while the species or sort of goodness which is the end of the volition is the form. So it makes no difference how many people will, so long as they will the same thing, for the form is then the same, if the material is various.

The composite character of the soul is treated Conv. 3. 2. 3, where it is shown to have three powers, vegetable, sensitive, and rational according to Arist. De Caelo 2. See Purg. 25. 74.

Conv. 3. 8. 1: “Of all the works of Divine wisdom, man is the most wonderful, considering how Divine power has united three natures under one form, and how subtly harmonized must his body be with that form.”

Conv. 3. 15. 5: “The beauty of the body results from the proper ordering of its members.”

Conv. 4. 25. 7: “The proper ordering of our members produces a pleasure of I know not what wonderful harmony.”

Eth. 10. 9. 8: “To live temperately and patiently is not pleasant to the majority, and especially to the young.”

Conv. 4. 9. 3: “We may almost say of the Emperor, wishing to represent his office by a figure, that he is the rider of human will. And it is very evident how wildly this horse goes over the field without a rider.”

For the outline of the argument in this chapter see Orosius, Hist. 6. 22. 5.

Conv. 4. 5. 2: “The immeasurable Divine Goodness, wishing to bring back to Itself the human creature, which by the sin of the transgression of the first man had become separated from God and unlike Him, it was decreed . . . that the Son of God should descend to earth to bring about this reunion. And since at His . . . coming it behoved not only the heavens, but the earth, to be in the best condition, and the best condition of the earth is under a monarchy . . . therefore Divine Providence ordained the people and the city wherein this should be fulfilled, that is, Rome the glorious.” De Mon. Book 2 is devoted to this subject of Rome’s foreordination.

The result of Adam’s sin Matilda touches on in her discourse with Dante on the nature of the terrestrial Paradise, Purg. 28. 91: “The highest Good, which does only its own pleasure, made the man good and for good, and gave him this place for an earnest to him of eternal peace. Through his own default he abode here little time; through his own default he changed to weeping and toil honest laughter and sweet mirth.”

Par. 7. 26: “For not enduring to the faculty that wills any curb for its own advantage, that man who was never born, in damning himself, damned all his progeny.” See De Mon. 2. 13. 1, and notes.

In the image symbolic of human history, Inf. 14. 94 ff., Dante identifies the golden age with the reign of Augustus. Line 112: “Every part beside the gold is burst with a cleft which drips tears.”

Par. 6. 55: “Hard upon that time when the heaven wholly willed to bring back the world to its tranquil order, Caesar by the will of Rome bare it. . . . It laid the world in such a peace that Janus had his shrine locked up.”

Conv. 4. 5. 3: “Nor ever was, nor ever will be, this world so perfectly disposed as then. . . . Universal peace reigned, which never was before nor ever will be again, because the ship of human society sped over a smooth sea straight to its destined port.”

Luke 2. 1, 14.

Gal. 4. 4: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.” Cf. Eph. 1. 10.

John 19. 23: “Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.” Dante uses the figure here to denote the undivided empire. The papal party used the same figure in their arguments to denote undivided ecclesiastical authority. De Mon. 3. 10. 4.

This figure of the ship of human society is found in Conv. 4. 5. 3 (see note 3 of the present chapter), Purg. 6. 77: “Ah, Italy . . . ship without a pilot in a great tempest,” etc.

This mixed metaphor of Dante’s, “dum bellua multo-rum capitum factum,” is a further illustration of the evil of multiplicity and lack of concord in men’s wills. Cf. De Mon. 1. 15. 1, and note. Beside the evil of many discordant wills, there is reference to the evils that may be included under the term “bestial.” See Conv. 4. 5. 3: “Vile beasts that pasture in the shape of men.” See especially Inf., cantos 12-17. Also note 14, De Mon. 2. 3.

The two intellects were the possible or apprehensive intellect, and the active intelligence. Cf. De Mon. 1. 3. 2. To these two powers Dante adds that of affection.

Purg. 18. 55: “Man knows not whence comes the understanding of the first cognitions, and the affection of the first objects of appetite.”

Par. 1. 120: “Creatures . . . that have intellect and love.”

Par. 6. 122; 13. 120; 15. 43: “When the bow of his ardent affection was so slackened that his speech descended towards the mark of our understanding, the first thing that was by me understood was, ‘Blessed be Thou, threefold and one.’ ” L. c. 15. 73: “The affection and the thought when as the first Equality appeared to you, became of one weight for each of you.”

The two intellects and the affection are the threefold means given to man by which he may arrive at the unity which is goodness in completeness, and there may see and know God. This suggests the means by which Dante achieves his vision in the Divine Comedy—Virgil, Beatrice, and St. Bernard.

Ps. 133. 1.

Ps. 2. 1-3. Cf. Acts 4. 25-27. The same language of the Psalm is used in Letter 6. 2: “To the infamous Florentines within the city.”

Conv. 4. 25. 4: “The sight of great and wonderful things . . . make those that perceive them desire to know them.”

Purg. 28. 90: “I will tell how by its cause proceeds that which makes thee wonder; and I will purge away the cloud which smites.”

Par. 1. 83: “The strangeness of the sound and the great light kindled in me a desire for their cause never before felt with such keenness.”

Conv. 4. 4. 3: “Some may demur, saying . . . the Roman power was not acquired by reason, nor by decree of a universal convention, but by force.”

Conv. 4. 4. 5: “Force was not the active cause; . . . not force but law, and that Divine, was the beginning of the Roman Empire.”

Reading “in hoc vitio” (in the error) and “unico suo” (His one) with Moore and Witte, rather than “in hos unico” and “uncto suo” with Giuliani. See Toynbee, Dante Studies, p. 302, for his interesting support of Giuliani’s reading and its bearing on the date of the De Mon. If, as he believes, “uncto” definitely refers to Henry VII as the Lord’s “anointed,” there would be strong reason for dating the treatise at a time shortly after Henry’s coming to Italy.

The whole of par. 2 is interesting for the information it contains concerning the change of political opinion that came upon Dante at some time in his life and made him one of the most enthusiastic and idealistic of Ghibellines, so idealistic indeed that in Purg. 27. 69 Cacciaguida rightly prophesies of the poet, “It shall be honorable to thee to have made thee a party by thyself.”

This figure is found again Conv. 2. 14. 3: “Labor of study and strife of doubt . . . are dissipated almost like little morning clouds before the face of the sun.”

Par. 25. 2: “The sacred poem to which both heaven and earth have set a hand.”

De Mon. 1. 1. 2.

De Mon. 1. 2. 2; 3. 2. 1.

Gen. Anim. 5. 8. Conv. 3. 6. 2: “Motive Powers . . . cause . . . all general forms.”

Letter 5. 8: “From the motion of the heavens we should know the Motor and His will.”

Par. 2. 131: “The heaven which so many lights make fair, from the deep mind of Him who revolves it takes the image.” L. c. 30. 107; 33. 145: “The Love which moves the sun and all the stars.”

Cf. De Mon. all of chapter 1. 8, and note 1.

“In fluitantem materiam.”

Par. 29. 22: “Form and matter in conjunction and in purity came forth to an existence which had no erring, as from a three-stringed bow three arrows.” Cf. De Mon. 1. 3. 2, and note 10.

S. T. 1. 46. 2: “The angels are pure form; form conjoined with matter appears in the visible creation; pure matter is not perceivable by the senses, but must be held to exist, and to have been created.” Also S. T. 1. 105. 4.

Inf. 11. 97: “Philosophy . . . notes . . . how nature takes her course from the understanding of God, and from His workmanship.”

Conv. 3. 6. 2: “And if this perfect form, copied and individualized, be not perfect, it is from no defect in the example, but in the matter of which the individual is made.”

Par. 1. 127: “Form many times accords not with the intention of the art, because the matter is deaf to respond.”

Par. 13. 67: “The wax of these and that which moulds it stands not in one manner, and therefore under the seal of the Idea more and less thereafter shines through.”

“Praeter intentionem Dei naturantis et caeli.”

For the mediaeval account of creation and the part of the heavens therein see S. T. 1. 66. 1-3; 1. 110. 2; 1. 115. 3-6. Cf. Bacon, Nov. Org. 1. 66.

Conv. 4. 9. 1: “Universal Nature . . . has jurisdiction as far as the whole world extends.”

James 1. 17: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.”

John 1. 3, 4: “Omnia per ipsum facta sunt, et sine ipso factum est nihil, quod factum est. In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum.” Moore says that Augustine twice quotes from these verses as Dante does here; “Quod factum est, in ipso vita erat.”

Par. 32. 61: “The King through whom this realm rests in so great love and in so great delight that no will dares aught beyond, creating all the minds in the joy of His countenance, as His own pleasure endows with grace diversely.”

Par. 19. 86: “The primary Will, which is of itself good, never has moved from itself, that is the highest Good.”

Eth. 1. 7. 18. Used again in Conv. 4. 13. 3: “And in the first of the Ethics he says that ‘the educated man demands certainty of knowledge about things, in so far as their nature admits of certainty.’ ”

Rom. 1. 20: “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”

Conv. 3. 12. 3: “It is convenient to treat of things not perceptible by the senses by means of things perceptible.” See also Conv. 4. 10. 3; 4. 16. 7; 4. 22. 6: “The intellect . . . cannot have its perfect use (which is to behold God, who is Supreme Intelligence) except in so far as the Intellect considers Him, and beholds Him in His effects.” L. c. 3. 8. 8: “All things which so overcome our intellect that we cannot see what they are, it is most fitting to treat by their effects.”

Letter 5. 8: “Through those things which have been created by God the human creature sees the invisible things with the eyes of the intellect; and if from things better known those less known are evident to us, in like manner it concerns human apprehension that from the motion of the heavens we should know the Motor and His will.”

The following are the more important of the many examples of Dante’s use of the figure regarding the wax and seal. Conv. 1. 8. 7: “Utility stamps upon the memory the image of the gift, which is the nutriment of friendship, and the better the gift the stronger this impression is.”

Conv. 2. 10. 5: “If wax had the sentiment of fear, it would be more afraid to come under the rays of the sun than stone would; because its nature makes it susceptible of a more powerful impression therefrom.”

Inf. 11. 49: “The smallest circle stamps with its seal Sodom and Cahors.”

Purg. 10. 45: “And she upon her action this speech imprinted—Ecce ancilla Dei! as aptly as a figure is made on wax by a seal.”

Purg. 18. 39: “Not every seal is good, even though good be the wax.”

Purg. 25. 95: “Here the neighboring air puts itself in that form which the soul that has remained by its virtue stamps upon it.”

Purg. 33. 79: “As wax by a seal, which changes not the figure impressed, so is my brain now stamped by you.”

Par. 1. 41: The sun “to its own fashion moulds and seals the wax of the world.”

Par. 2. 130: “And the heaven which so many lights make fair, from the mind of Him who revolves it takes the image, and makes thereof a seal.”

Par. 7. 69: “That which from It immediately distils has no end thereafter, because when It seals, Its impress is unmoved.”

Par. 8. 128: “The nature of the spheres . . . is seal to the mortal wax.”

Par. 13. 67 ff. See note 6 of this chapter.

Conv. 4. 5. 1: “It is no wonder if Divine Providence, which transcends all human and angelic perception, often proceeds in a way mysterious to us; since it often happens that human actions have for men themselves a hidden meaning.”

Conv. 4. 4. 4: “And because a nature more gentle in governing, more powerful in maintaining, and more subtle in acquiring, than that of the Latin people there never was and never will be, . . . therefore God elected them for this office.” The nobility of Rome has special consideration Conv. 4. 5; Par. 6. 19, 20.

“Adsumpta,” the major premise. In paragraphs 2 and 8 the word “subadsumpta” is used for minor premise.

Eth. 4. 3. 15.

Pol. 4. 8. 9. So we find in Conv. 4, Canz. 3. 2: “This very false opinion among men, that one is wont to call him noble who can say, ‘I was the son or grandson of a truly noble man,’ though he himself were worthless.” In Conv. 4. 7 hereditary nobility is proved to be a thing impossible.

Juvenal, Sat. 8. 20. Cf. Conv. 4. 29. 4, where the satire is discussed at some length. Dante speaks again of Juvenal in Purg. 22. 13. His relation to Dante is considered by Moore, Vol. 1, in Studies, pp. 255-258.

All of Book 4 in the Convito is given up to an exposition of the nature of nobility, according to the definition of Juvenal rather than that of Aristotle.

Canz. 3. 6: “Nobility exists where Virtue dwells, not Virtue where she is.” Conv. 4. 18. 1: “All the virtues . . . proceed from nobility as an effect from its cause.”

Par. 16. 1: “O small nobility of blood that is ours.”

Matt. 7. 2.

“Divinus poeta nostra,” or “poeta nostra,” as Virgil is called throughout the De Mon., is but one of the numberless evidences of the affection and reverence Dante felt for the Latin poet. Most beautiful is the well-known tribute in Inf. 1. 79:

For Virgil’s place and influence in the Middle Ages see Comparetti, Virgil in the Middle Ages; Sellar, Virgil; and Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 166-197.

Livy 1. 1. As will be seen later in the De Mon., Dante uses Livy freely as an historical authority. Moore writes of Dante’s relation to the Roman historian in Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 273-278.

Aen. 1. 342: “Sed summa sequar vestigia rerum.” All modern editions have “fastigia” for “vestigia.”

Aen. 1. 544.

Aen. 6. 170. For the death of Misenus see Conv. 4. 26. 6.

Homer, Il. 24. 259, quoted Eth. 7. 1. 1. Three different times Dante uses these Homeric lines: in the Vita Nuova, § 2; in Conv. 4. 20. 2: “There are men most noble and divine . . . Aristotle proves in the seventh of the Ethics by the text of Homer the poet;” and in the passage of the De Mon. here being considered.

In regard to Dante’s knowledge of Homer see Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 164-166; Toynbee, Studies, pp. 204-215.

In Inf. 11. 79-83 Virgil asks, “Hast thou no memory of those words with which the Ethics handle the three dispositions which Heaven brooks not,—incontinence, malice, and mad beastliness?”

Aen. 3. 1.

Dardanus was son of Jupiter and Electra of Arcadia, founder of the city Dardania in Troas, and ancestor of the royal line of Troy. Cf. Conv. 4. 14. 9.

“Electra, ut Graii perhibent, Atlantide cretus.” Dante inserted an “et” before “Atlantide,” thereby blurring the sense. Moore was the first editor to correct the error. See Toynbee, Studies, p. 280.

Inf. 4. 121: “I saw Electra with many companions, among whom I was aware of Hector and Aeneas; . . . and I saw King Latinus, who was sitting with Lavinia his daughter.”

Aen. 8. 134-137.

Aen. 3. 163-167.

The fourth-century historian, Paulus Orosius, wrote the Historiae Adversum Paganos, one of the chief historical and geographical authorities of the mediaeval centuries, and the source of many of Dante’s statements regarding these two subjects. See Toynbee, Studies, pp. 121-136, and Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 279-282. The reference here is to Hist. 1. 2. 11.

Aen. 3. 339-340. From the latter line, “quem tibi iam Troja peperit fumante Creusa,” modern editors omit the last three words as spurious.

Aen. 4. 171-172.

Aen. 12. 936-937. In Par. 6. 3 Aeneas is called “the ancient who carried off Lavinia.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 ad), the greatest of Dominicans, the pupil of Albertus Magnus, the friend of St. Bonaventura, and the author of the Summa Theologica, Contra Gentiles, and many other works. Moore points out the extent of Dante’s debt to him in Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 311-318. The treatise Contra Gentiles here quoted was written to prove that Christian theology is the “sum and crown of all science.”

Conv. 3. 7. 8: “The very foundation of our faith is in the miracles done by Him who was crucified, who created our reason and willed it to be less than His power.” L. c. 3. 14. 5: “Every miracle may be reasonable to a higher intellect.”

Exod. 8. 19.

Letter 5. 8: “If there is time to survey the affairs of the worlds even to the triumph of Octavian, we shall see that some of them have completely transcended the heights of human valor, and that God has worked somewhat through men, just as through the medium of the new heavens.”

Liv. 1. 20. 4; 5. 52. 7.

Lucan, Phar. 9. 477. Lucan, to whom Dante is indebted “for a considerable amount of poetic material of different kinds,” and Dante’s relation to him, is discussed by Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 228-242. It is strange that Dante in this place cites as an instance of supernatural intervention a story which Lucan explains so rationally.

Liv. 5. 47. So in Conv. 4. 5. 4: “And did not God put forth His hand when the Gauls, having taken all Rome, stole into the Capitol by night, and only the voice of a goose made it known?”

Aen. 8. 652-656.

Liv. 26. 11; Oros. 4. 17.

Liv. 2. 13; Oros. 2. 5; Aurel. Victor, De Viris Illust. c. 13.

Par. 8. 97: “The Good which sets in revolution and contents all the realm which thou art scaling, makes its foresight to be virtue in these great bodies.”

That is, before the birth of Christ the invisible God worked for the visible things of the world. Later, Christ, the visible God, worked for the invisible things of heaven. Cf. the argument at the end of De Mon. 2. 2.

“Jus” is not adequately translated by “right,” for Dante makes the word include what we mean by justice, law, and at times duty.

Eth. 5. 6 concerns itself with political justice or right, the justice which should be practiced by men in society toward one another.

The Digests of the Roman law were originally drawn up by Justinian. The “descriptio” or account spoken of here is mentioned in Conv. 4. 9. 3: “It was written at the beginning of the old Digests, ‘The written law is the art of goodness and equity.’ ” The reference may be found in the Dig. de Justitia et Jure 1. 1: “Jus est a justitia appellatum: nam ut eleganter Celsus definit, jus est ars boni et aequi.”

De Invent. 1. 38. 68.

Seneca is not the author of De Quatuor Virtutibus, but Martin, abbot of Dumiens and Bishop of Braga, who wrote in the latter part of the sixth century two works, De Remediis Fortuitorum and Formula Honestae Vitae sive Quatuor Virtutibus Cardinalibus. In the latter book, c. 4, is the reference: “Justitia non nostra constitutio sed divina lex est, et vinculum societatis humanae.” Cf. Conv. 3. 8. 5, where “the book of the Four Cardinal Virtues” is again used as authority.

See note 12 of De Mon. 1. 11.

The same sentiment is found in Letter 5. 3: “He is Caesar, and his majesty flows from the font of pity.” The source of this quotation has recently been ascertained by Toynbee to be the Legend of St. Sylvester in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine (Archbishop of Genoa, 1292-1298). See Toynbee, Studies, p. 297. Dr. Albert S. Cook suggests comparison with the Dies Irae of Thomas of Celano, l. 24: “Salva me, fons pietatis.”

De Off. 2. 8. 26, 27. From this work of Cicero’s Dante quotes again in the last paragraph of this chapter and in De Mon. 2. 8. 7; 2. 10. 2. It is to the same book Dante owes the idea of sins of violence and sins of fraud as distinguished Inf. 11. 22-60. For an account of Dante’s obligation to Cicero, see Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 258-273.

Liv. 3. 26, 29; Oros. 2. 12. 8. In Conv. 4. 5. 4 the examples of Roman nobility are almost exactly the same as here, though cited in a different order. Moore calls attention to the similarity of this account, and that of Conv. 4. 5. 4, with Augustine’s De Civ. Dei 5. 18. See also Par. 6. 46 for the names of illustrious Romans cited by Justinian as names worthy of being remembered.

De Fin. 2. 4. 12. This Ciceronian work Dante always calls De Fine Bonorum. The philosophy of Epicurus is considered by Dante, Conv. 4. 6. 6.

Inf. 10. 14: “In this part have their burial place with Epicurus all his followers, who make the soul dead with the body.”

For Fabricius see De Mon. 2. 12, and Purg. 20. 25: “O good Fabricius, thou wouldst rather virtue with poverty than to possess great riches with crime.”

Aen. 6. 844.

That is, what the Gauls had taken from them.

Liv. 5. 32 and 43.

Aen. 6. 825.

Liv. 2. 5; Oros. 2. 5; Valerius Maximus, Memorab. 5. 8. 1; Aurel. Victor, De Viris Illust. c. 10. Brutus is referred to as the man who in Conv. 4. 5. 4 “condemned his own son to death for love of the public welfare.”

Aen. 6. 820.

Liv. 2. 12; Val. Max. 5. 12. Mucius has mention, Conv. 4. 5. 4, and Par. 4. 84: “Mucius stern to his own hand; . . . so stout a will is too rare.”

Liv. 8. 9; 10. 28, 29; Val. Max. 1. 3; 5. 6; Aurel. Victor 26, 27. These men have a place, Conv. 4. 5. 4, and Par. 6. 47: “Decii and Fabii had the fame which I with good-will embalm.”

Cato of Utica, great-grandson of Cato the Censor. Dante’s reverence for this man found expression in many ways. He is made guardian of the gate of Purgatory, and type of the soul liberated from sin by annihilation of the body. See Purg. 1 and 2. In Purg. 1. 73 Virgil recommends Dante to Cato thus: “He goes seeking freedom, which is so dear, as he knows who for it renounces life.”

Conv. 4. 5. 4: “O most sacred heart of Cato, who will presume to speak of thee? Certainly nothing greater than silence can be said of thee.” See also Conv. 3. 5. 8; 4. 6. 5; 4. 27. 2; 4. 28. 2.

Pyrrhus is mentioned Par. 6. 44, etc. Cf. De Mon. 2. 10. 5.

De Fin. 2. 19. 61.

De Off. 1. 31. 112.

See chapter 5.

De Mon. 1. 3, note 3.

“Construendo et destruendo.” The first of these logical terms designates a refutation which proceeds from the antecedent to the consequent; the second, one that proceeds from the consequent to the antecedent.

Eth. 6. 9. 5. For “good counsel” Dante uses the word “eubalia,” i. e. εὐβουλία.

“Signa tamen veri bene sequuntur ex signis, quae sunt signa falsi.” “Signa” I take to mean “words;” Dante would say that words may be ambiguous, but not the ideas that they stand for.

No line in the De Mon. shows better the change in usage that has been undergone by this word “form,” and how, from meaning the vitalizing, internal principle of a thing, it has come to be the symbol of externality.

Conv. 4. 27. 7 makes use of the thief again for demonstrative purposes.

Par. 5. 33: “Thou art desiring to make a good work of a bad gain.”

Conv. 2. 5. 4: “No effect is greater than its cause; because the cause cannot give what it does not possess. Whence, seeing that the Divine Intelligence is the cause of all things, and above all of human intelligence, the human cannot exceed the Divine.”

Conv. 3. 15. 4: “The natural desire of everything is regulated according to the capacity of the thing desiring; otherwise it would oppose itself, which is impossible, and nature would have made it in vain, which is also impossible.” Cf. De Mon. 1. 3, notes 2 and 3.

Par. 1. 103: “All things whatsoever have an order among themselves; and that is form, which makes the universe in the likeness of God.” Cf. De Mon. 1. 6, and notes.

See Conv. 4. 4. 4, and 4. 5, all the chapter.

See De Mon. 1. 8.

De Mon. 1. 3, notes 2 and 3; 2. 7, note 2. Also Par. 8. 97 ff., and Conv. 4. 24. 7: “Bountiful nature . . . never fails to provide all necessary things.”

Phys. 2. 2.

Par. 8. 122: “It behooves that divers must be the roots of the effects in you; wherefore one is born Xerxes, another Melchisedec, and another he who flying through the air lost his son. . . . A nature begotten would always make its course like its begetter, if the divine foresight were not stronger.”

Conv. 4. 21. 2: “The soul . . . as soon as produced, receives from the motive power of heaven its possible intellect, which creates potentially in itself all universal forms as they exist in its producer.”

Purg. 30. 109: “By coöperation of the mighty wheels which direct every seed to some end according as the stars accompany.”

Pol. 1. 5. 11.

Inf. 2. 20: “He [Aeneas] was in the empyrean heaven chosen for father of Rome our parent and of her empire, both which, if one say the truth, were established for the holy place where sits the successor of the sovereign Peter.”

Conv. 4. 5. 2; 4. 5. 5: “A special origin and special growth, thought out and ordained by God, was that of the holy city. And certainly I am of the firm opinion that the stones which form her walls are worthy of reverence; and the ground on which she stands is worthy beyond all that has been preached and proved by men.”

Note 6 above.

Aen. 6. 847 ff.

Aen. 4. 227 ff.

Dante in various places dwells on the two means of knowledge given to man. Conv. 4. 9 concerns itself with the functions of reason. In Par. 24 St. Peter questions Dante as to the nature of faith, of its matter, and he calls it “This precious jewel whereon every virtue is founded.” In one aspect the Divine Comedy may be interpreted as the picture of a man climbing by the help of reason and faith to a sight and knowledge of God. Reason and faith; Virgil and Beatrice; philosophy and theology. Cf. De Mon. 3. 16. 5.

Pol. 1. 2. 14.

Eth. 1. 2. 8: “To discover the good of an individual is satisfactory, but to discover that of a state or a nation is more noble and divine.”

Par. 4. 67: “That our justice should appear unjust in the eyes of mortals is argument of faith, and pertains not to heretic pravity.”

Par. 19. 70: “A man is born on the banks of the Indus, and none is there to talk of Christ, nor to read, nor to write; and all his volitions and acts are good, so far as human reason sees, without sin in life or in converse. He dies unbaptized and without fault; where is this justice which condemns him?”

Heb. 11. 6.

Lev. 17. 3, 4.

John 10. 7, 9: “I am the door of the sheep.”

Witte quotes from Isidore: “With a moral significance, we sacrifice a calf, when we overcome pride of the flesh; a lamb, when we correct irrational impulses; a kid, when we conquer lust; a dove, when we preserve purity of morals; unleavened bread, ‘when we keep the feast, not in the leaven of malice, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’ ”

1 Sam. 15. 10, 11.

Exod. 7. 9.

2 Chron. 20. 12 (Vulg.).

Acts 1. 23-26.

The word “duellum” is translated by Wicksteed as “ordeal,” and by Church as “duel.” To prevent misunderstanding, I have thought best to translate the word by “single combat,” or “combat man to man,” in almost every case.

Lucan, Phar. 4. 609 ff.

Ovid, Met. 9. 183. The Metamorphoses are generally called by Dante as here, de Rerum Transmutatione. For Ovidian references in Dante see Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 206-228.

Met. 10. 560.

Aen. 5. 335 ff.

De Off. 3. 10. 42.

“The saying expresses the Ghibelline view of the relation of the Empire to the Pope; it may have originated with the coronation of Charles the Great.” Church.

De Mon. 1. 2. 1.

Oros. Hist. 1. 4. 1, 4.

Inf. 5. 58: “She is Semiramis, of whom we read that she succeeded to Ninus and was his wife. She held the land which the Sultan rules.”

Met. 4. 58, 88.

Oros. Hist. 1. 14. 1-3.

“Athlothetas” were the judges or umpires in the Greek games, whose seats were opposite to the goal at the side of the stadium. See Smith’s Dict. of Antiquities. Aristotle in the Ethics, 1. 4. 5, says: “Plato also proposes doubt . . . whether the right way is from principles or to principles; just as in the course from the starting-post to the goal, or the contrary.”

De Mon. 1. 14. 2; 2. 9. 4; 3. 3. 1.

Purg. 28. 71: “Hellespont, there where Xerxes passed, a bridle still to all pride of men.”

Phar. 2. 672.

Dante puts Alexander among the tyrants and murderers in the river Phlegethon, Inf. 12. 107. In Inf. 14. 31 the flakes of fire fall “As Alexander, in those hot parts of India, saw falling upon his host flames unbroken even to the ground.” In Conv. 4. 11. 7 Dante seems to esteem him highly, at least in one regard: “And who has not Alexander still at heart, because of his royal beneficence?”

This reference to Livy is an error on Dante’s part, for the Roman historian nowhere recounts this story of the ambassadors or of the conqueror’s death. Livy says (9. 18. 3) of Alexander and the Romans: “Quem ne fama quidem illis notum arbitror fuisse.” Toynbee solved the problem of the origin of the ambassador story by tracing it to the Chronicle of Bishop Otto of Freising. See Toynbee, Studies, pp. 290 ff. Of Dante’s belief concerning the place of Alexander’s death Moore says: “This error probably arose from the confusion of Babylon in Assyria with Babylon (i. e. old Cairo) in Egypt. As Dante probably knew (1) that Alexander died at Babylon, and (2) that he was buried (according to Lucan) in Egypt, he might naturally have inferred that his death occurred at the Egyptian Babylon.”

Phar. 8. 692.

Rom. 11. 33. This verse is again quoted Conv. 4. 21. 3.

Aen. 1. 234.

Phar. 1. 109, 111.

De Consol. Phil. 2, Metr. 6. 8-13 (Temple Classics trans.).

Luke 2. 1. This reference is used in the letter to King Henry, Letter 7. 3; Conv. 4. 5; De Mon. 2. 12. 5.

Ps. 11. 7 (Vulg. 10. 8).

De Off. 1. 11. 34.

Vegetius, De Re Militari 3. 9. This book on the Art of War is a compilation from many sources, dedicated by its author, of whom nothing is known, to Emperor Valentinian II (375-392). Dante refers to it but this once. This fact, together with Moore’s discovery that the context does not bear out the application of the quotation in question, has led Moore to conclude that Dante knew of Vegetius only through a mediaeval handbook or Florilegium. See Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. p. 297.

De Off. 1. 12. 38. Church calls attention to the fact that Cicero’s word is “Imperii gloria,” not “corona.”

Matt. 18. 20.

De Mon. 1. 11.

These lines are from Ennius, quoted De Off. 1. 12. 38.

1 Sam. 17. In Letter 7. 6 Dante addresses Henry as a second David come to overthrow a new Goliath.

Hercules and Antaeus, used as an example in De Mon. 2. 8. 5. In Inf. 31. 132: “The hands whence Hercules once felt a mighty constraint.” The story of the combat is told in detail in Conv. 3. 3. 7.

Aen. 12. 942.

Aen. 12. 948. Par. 6. 35: “Pallas died to give a kingdom to the Roman ensign,” seeing that his death was the real cause of Turnus’ death.

Liv. 1. 24, 25.

Oros. 2. 4. 9.

Phar. 2. 135-138: “Romanaque Samnis ultra Caudinas superavit vulnera furcas.” Modern editions have “speravit” or “spiravit” instead of “superavit.”

Par. 27. 61: “The Providence on high, which with Scipio guarded for Rome the glory of the world.”

Par. 6. 49: “It [the ensign] brought to earth the pride of the Arabs, who in Hannibal’s train passed the Alpine cliffs. . . . Under it in their youth triumphed Scipio and Pompey. . . . Afterward, hard upon the time when the heaven wholly willed to bring back the world to its tranquil order, Caesar by the will of Rome bare it.”

2 Tim. 4. 8.

De Mon. 2. 8. 1. For the chapter as a whole read as its best commentaries Par. 6 (Justinian to Dante) and Conv. 4. 5.

Witte points out that these same men are referred to in Purg. 6. 91: “Ah, folk that ought to have been at prayer, and to let Caesar sit in the saddle.” They are the clergy who wrongly wish a controlling hand in the world of temporal things. In this chapter Dante is again making use of the language of Ps. 2. 1, and calling attention once more to the opening argument of Book 2.

Conv. 4. 27. 4: “Those which do belong to your profession . . . take a tenth part and give it to God, that is, to those miserable ones to whom Divine favor alone remains.”

Par. 12. 93: “Not the tithes which belong to God’s poor.”

Par. 22. 82: “Whatsoever the Church guards belongs all to the folk who ask in God’s name.” Cf. De Mon. 3. 10. 6.

Cupidity in the Church, as in men’s minds (De Mon. 1. 11. 5), was the source and root of evil. Inf. 1. 49 uses as the figure of Avarice, or the Church grasping for temporal domain, a “she-wolf, that with all ravenings looked fraught in its leanness, and has already made much people wretched.”

The donation of Constantine is meant. See De Mon. 3. 10. Par. 20. 56, the eagle speaks of Constantine’s gift as “a good intention which bare ill fruit.”

This was more true of Boniface VIII than of any other Pope, for he furthered the interests of his family and friends by all means in his power. Milman says of him in his Latin Christianity, Bk. 11, ch. 7: “Of all the Roman Pontiffs, Boniface left the darkest name for craft, arrogance, ambition, even for avarice and cruelty.”

Par. 6. 21: “All contradictories are both false and true.” That is, one is false and the other true, for contradictories are pairs of propositions so related to each other that both cannot be false. Wicksteed further explains that “They are of the form either of ‘All A is B’ and ‘Some A is not B,’ or ‘No A is B’ and ‘Some A is B.’ These four terms were usually arranged at the corners of a square in the logic books.

The contradictories are at opposite ends of the diameters, the source of the phrase ‘diametrically opposed.’ ”

That is, “Christ in his birth authorized an injustice.”

Eth. 10. 1. 3. Cf. De Mon. 1. 13. 1. So also Thomas Aquinas says, “Concerning human actions and passions words are to be trusted less than deeds.”

Luke 2. 1.

Purg. 10. 34: “The angel that came on earth with the decree of the many years wept-for peace . . . opened heaven from its long interdict.”

Par. 26 contains the computation of time from the fall to the redemption. Cf. l. 118: “From that place whence thy Lady moved Virgil, for four thousand three hundred and two revolutions of the sun did I long for this assembly, and I saw him return to all the stars of his road nine hundred and thirty times whiles that I was upon earth.” According to this, Adam makes the number of years 5232 from creation to crucifixion.

That is, to a syllogism.

The second figure has the middle term for predicate in both premises.

Rom. 5. 12. In De Mon. 1. 16 Dante dates “all our errors” from the fall of Adam. In Par. 7 Beatrice explains to Dante the nature of human redemption. Cf. l. 85: “Your nature, when it all sinned in its seed, was removed from these dignities as from Paradise; nor could it recover them, . . . by any way without passing through some one of these roads; either that God alone of his clemency should have put away, or that man should have made satisfaction for his folly.”

Purg. 32. 37. Here in the vision of the Church and the Empire Dante symbolizes the fall and redemption of man, the errors of avarice in the Church, and the universal jurisdiction of Monarchy. “I heard all murmur ‘Adam,’ then they circled a plant despoiled of flowers and of leafage too on every branch. Its foliage, which spreads the wider as it is the higher up, would be wondered at for height by the Indians in their forests. ‘Blessed art thou, Grifon, that thou tearest not with thy beak of this wood sweet to the taste, since ill was the belly griped therefrom.’ ” As Plumptre remarks, the apostrophe to the grifon is the thought developed in the second book of De Mon.

Eph. 1. 5-8.

The work of redeeming the human race is finished. John 19. 30.

Exod. 2. 14.

“Sub ordine judice.”

Is. 53. 4. Quoted Letter 6. 6.

John 18. 14: “Now Caiaphas was he which gave counsel to the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.”

Luke 23. 11.

Pilate was the real Roman regent. Cf. Par. 6. 86, where Tiberius is called “the third Caesar,” and read all the canto for Justinian’s account of the Roman Empire.

That Constantine’s purpose was high Dante always insisted on. See De Mon. 2. 12. 1; and 3. 10 and notes. Par. 20. 58: “Now knows he how the ill, deduced from his good work, is not harmful to him, albeit that the world be thereby destroyed.”

Dan. 6. 22. The word “righteousness” is the Latin “justitia,” which in chapters 11, 12, etc., of Book 1 was translated “justice.”

Note that it was love of truth that started Dante on his task in De Mon. 1. 1.

Prov. 8. 7. Dante’s idea here expressed does not exactly coincide with that in the verse cited, which runs: “For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips.”

Eth. 1. 6. 1: “For the preservation of truth . . . we should even do away with private feelings, especially as we are philosophers; for both being dear to us, it is a sacred duty to prefer truth.”

In Letter 9. 5, to the Italian Cardinals, Dante says again: “I have the authority of the Master Philosopher, who, in treating of all morality, taught that truth is to be preferred beyond any friend whatsoever.”

1 Thess. 5. 8.

Is. 6. 6, 7.

Col. 1. 13, 14.

Ps. 112. 6, 7. Much the same idea is in Par. 17. 118: “If I am a timid friend to the truth, I fear to lose life among those who will call this time ancient.”

De Mon. 3. 4 takes up in detail the argument of the sun and moon.

De Mon. 1. 2. 2; 2. 2. 1.

“Assumptions” are the major and minor premises.

Anal. Pr. 2. 2.

Dante proves this point De Mon. 1. 3. 2; 1. 10. 1; 2. 7. 2, 3; and 3. 15. 1. See also the quotations in the notes to these paragraphs. Dante expresses the idea most clearly, perhaps, in Par. 1. 109: “In that order which I say have all natures their propension, through divers lots, more or less near to their origin; whereby they move to divers ports through the sea of being, and each with instinct given to it to bear it.”

Miss Hillard notes the use of proof by reduction to absurdity, Conv. 2. 9. 4.

“Whether the authority of the Roman Monarchy derives from God immediately, or from some vicar of God.”

“Whether temporal Monarchy is necessary for the well-being of the world.”

“Whether the Roman people rightfully appropriated the office of Monarchy.”

Conv. 2. 14. 12: “The circle by reason of its arc cannot be exactly squared.”

Par. 33. 133: “As is the geometer who applies himself wholly in order to measure the circle, and finds not by thinking that principle whereof he is in want, such was I.”

In 1761 Lambert proved that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter was incommensurable. Lindemann has since demonstrated that this ratio was transcendental, and that the quadrature of the circle by means of the rule and compass only is impossible.

The number of the angels Dante discusses in Conv. 2. 6, concluding in chapter 2. 6. 2: “It is proved to us that these creatures exist in immense numbers; because His Spouse and Secretary, the Holy Church . . . says, believes, and preaches that these most noble creatures are almost innumerable; and she divides them into three hierarchies.”

Eth. 3. 3. 6: “About things eternal no man deliberates, as about the world, or the diagonal and the side of a square, that they are incommensurable, . . . nor about things accidental, as the finding of a treasure, nor yet about everything human, as no Lacedaemonian deliberates how the Scythians might be best governed.” Moore thinks that Dante’s substitution of “Egyptian” for “Lacedaemonian” was merely a slip of memory.

Purg. 18. 16: “Direct toward me the keen eyes of thy understanding, and the error will be manifest to thee of the blind who make themselves leaders.” So wickedness to Dante was largely a matter of ignorance, of blindness, of inability to understand. With sight and comprehension of good came right action.

Dante even in his moments of greatest indignation had only reverence for the papal office. Inf. 19. 100: “Were it not that still forbids it to me my reverence for the supreme keys which thou heldest in the glad life, I would use words yet more grievous;” so he says to Pope Nicolas placed among the simoniacs in Malebolge. And of the persecution of Boniface VIII, whom Dante hated above all men, he writes Purg. 20. 86: “I see the fleur-de-lys enter into Alagna, and in his Vicar Christ himself made captive. I see Him being mocked a second time, I see the vinegar and the gall renewed, and Him between live thieves put to death. I see the new Pilate so cruel that that sates him not, but without decree he bears into the temple his greedy sails.”

John 8. 44: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” For cupidity as the greatest of human sins, see De Mon. 2. 12. 1; 1. 11. 5, and note 12. The worst form of cupidity was simony, trafficking in spiritual matters, shown forth in Inf. 19. 1 ff.: “O Simon Magus! O unhappy followers! because the things of God, which ought to be spouses, and yet in your greed make to commit whoredom for gold and for silver—now it is meet that for you the trumpet sound, seeing that in the third pit ye are stationed.”

Letter 9. 7 To the Italian Cardinals: “Every one has taken Cupidity to wife, even as ye have,—Cupidity, who is never, like Charity, the mother of Piety and Equity, but always of Impiety and Iniquity. Ah, most holy Mother, Bride of Christ, what sons dost thou bear of water and of the spirit to shame thee! Neither Charity nor Justice, but the daughters of the horse-leech have become thy daughters-in-law, and all save the Bishop of Luni attest what kind of sons they have brought to thee. Thy Gregory lies among the cobwebs; Ambrose lies on the neglected shelves of the clergy; Augustine lies forgotten; Dionysius, Damascenus, and Bede have been thrown aside; and I know not what Speculum, Innocent, and he of Ostia preach. Wherefore is this? They sought God as their end and best good; these run after riches and benefices.”

Two of these men are named Par. 12. 83, Henry of Susa, Archbishop of Embrun and Cardinal of Ostia, and Thaddeus of Bologna. In Letter 9. 7, quoted in the note preceding, the Speculum of Guglielmo Durante, Innocent III, and the Cardinal of Ostia make another list.

The Decretals were those papal decrees which form the groundwork of the ecclesiastical law. The most important compilation was issued by Gregory IX in 1234. The Code of the Papal Decretals was promulgated as the statute law of Christendom, the authority of which was superior to all secular law. See Toynbee, Dict. s. v. Decretali; Hallam, Middle Ages, Ch. 8, part 2.

Par. 9. 133: “For this the Gospel and the great Doctors are deserted, and study is given to the Decretals alone, as appears on their margins.”

Par. 20. 103: “They issued not from their bodies as thou deemest Gentiles, but Christians, in firm faith, he of the Feet that should suffer, he of them having suffered.”

Rom. 8. 16, 17.

Ps. 111. 9. This is a rather strained interpretation of “He hath sent redemption unto his people; he hath commanded his covenant for ever.”

Cant. 1. 4. Dante, as was customary in his times, interprets the Canticles allegorically as applying to the Church.

Matt. 28. 20.

St. Augustine (354-430). Dante quotes in the next chapter from two of his works, De Civitate Dei and De Doctrina Christiana. The ideals of Augustine in the former treatise and those of Dante in the De Mon. are very similar. For his relation to Dante see Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 291-294. Augustine is honored with a seat in the Celestial Rose by St. Francis and St. Benedict Par. 32. 35. For further mention of him see note 9, above.

Matt. 15. 2, 3.

Phys. 1. 2. “Cupiditas” is the word I have this time translated “passions.” Cf. Purg. 19. 121: “As avarice extinguished our love toward every good, whence labor was lost, so justice here holds us straitly bound.” See also note 9, above.

Metaphys. 1. 1: “We reckon the chief artificers in each case to be entitled to more dignity, and to the reputation of superior knowledge, and to be more wise than the handicraftsmen, because the former are acquainted with the causes of things that are being constructed, whereas the latter produce things as certain inanimate things do, . . . unconsciously.” Bryce dates the successful claim of the papacy to rule in temporal matters to Gregory VII (1073-1086).

Gen. 1. 15, 16.

“Dua regimina”—two guiding or governing powers. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, c. 15: “The analogy between the lights of heaven and the potentates of earth is one which mediaeval writers are very fond of. It seems to have originated with Gregory VII” (1073-1086).

“Two lights, the sun and the moon, illumine the globe; two powers, the papal and the royal, govern it; but as the moon receives her light from the more brilliant star, so kings reign by the chief of the Church who comes from God,” are the words of Innocent IV (1243-1254).

Bryce speaks in the chapter cited above of a curious seal of the Emperor Otto IV (1208-1212), figured in J. M. Heineccius’ De veteribus Germanorum atque aliarum nationum sigillis, on which the sun and moon are represented over the head of the Emperor: “There seems to be no reason why we should not take the device as typifying the accord of the spiritual and temporal powers which was brought about at the accession of Otto, the Guelfic leader, and the favored candidate of Pope Innocent III.”

Dante’s real view, that the spiritual and temporal rulers are coördinate but different, is expressed De Mon. 3. 16. 6. Again in Purg. 16. 106 is the idea in more figurative language: “Rome, that made the good world, was wont to have two suns, that showed the one and the other road, both of the world and of God. The one has put out the other, and the sword is joined with the crook; and the one and the other together of very necessity it behoves that they go ill.”

Letter 6. 2 (To the Florentines) has the following figure: “Why, then, such a foolish supposition being disposed of, do ye, deserting legitimate government, seek new Babylonians to found new kingdoms, in order that the Florentine may be one policy and the Roman another? Why may it not please you to envy the apostolic monarchy likewise? that if Delia is to have a twin in heaven, the Delian One may also?”

After the death of Henry VII and Clement V Dante wrote in Letter 9. 10: “Rome, that city now deprived of both its luminaries.”

Soph. Elenc. 18.

Phys. 1. 3. Parmenides was a Greek philosopher, born at Elea in Italy circ. 513 bc, founder of the Eleatic School of philosophy, in which he was succeeded by Zeno. Melissus of Samos was one of his followers. These two false reasoners serve for illustration again in Par. 13. 122: “He returns not the same as he sets out, who fishes for the truth and has not the art; and of this are to the world open proofs Parmenides, Melissus, and Bryson.”

“Distinction” marks out two possible meanings in a proposition; one, the sense in which it must be understood to make it true; the other, the sense in which it must be understood in order to support a given conclusion.

De Civit. Dei 16. 2.

De Doctr. Christ. 1. 36. Here Dante departs from our present reading of Augustine’s text by using the words “per gyrum” instead of “per agrum.”

L. c. 37.

“Litera,” Witte says, was a solemn word used for “text,” especially in referring to sacred writings, during the Middle Ages.

“Man restored to the state of Eden would not need ecclesiastical any more than he would need imperial guidance or authority. Hence Virgil ‘crowns and mitres’ Dante at the entrance of the Garden of Eden, Purg. 27, 42. It follows that Beatrice, whose ministrations begin here, may be Revelation, but cannot be Ecclesiastical Authority.” Wicksteed.

The heaven of the moon was the first of the ten Dantean heavens. It is described Conv. 2. 3-7, and Par. 2-5. Nine of these were the so-called moving heavens, each having for its motor a certain order of spiritual creature. Conv. 2. 6. 5: “Wherefore it is reasonable to believe that the motive powers of the Heaven of the Moon are of the order of Angels.”

Conv. 2. 6. 7: “These motive powers guide by their thought alone the revolutions over which each one presides.”

De Mon. 3. 16. 9, and note.

The apostolic benediction even of Clement V, whom Dante punishes among the simoniacs in Inf. 19, is thus spoken of, Letter 5. 10: “This is he whom Peter, the vicar of God, admonishes us to honor; whom Clement, now the successor of Peter, illuminates with the light of the apostolic benediction, in order that where the spiritual ray does not suffice, the splendor of the lesser light may illumine.”

Gen. 29. 34, 35. Reference is made to the sons of Levi as men of churchly and not secular authority Purg. 16. 127. Marco Lombardo is speaking to Dante: “Say from this day forth that the Church of Rome, through confounding of herself two governments, falls in the mire, and befouls herself and her burden.” “O my Marco,” said I, “thou reasonest well; and now I perceive why the sons of Levi were exempted from the heritage.”

1 Sam. 10. 1, Samuel anoints Saul; 15. 23, he deposes him; 15. 28, he transfers the authority of ruler “to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou.”

Decretals of Gregory, 2. 13. 2: “The Pope has power to depose the Emperor for legitimate causes.” Boniface VIII not only deposed Philip the Fair, but offered the French crown to Emperor Albert I.

“Sicut aliud est esse doctorem, aliud esse interpretem.”

Witte quotes from the Decretals of Gregory IX, 1. 28. 5: “A vicar can do whatever pertains to the jurisdiction of him in whose stead he acts.”

Gen. Anim. 5. 8. The figure is again used Par. 2. 128: “The movement and virtue of the holy circles, as from the smith the craft of the hammer, must needs from the blessed movers have their breath.”

Conv. 4. 23. 2: “The fire and the hammer are efficient causes of the knife, although the principal cause is the smith.”

Eth. 6. 2. 6: “But what is past does not admit of being undone; therefore Agathon rightly says, ‘Of this alone even God is deprived, the power of making things that are past never to have been.’ ”

Agathon is mentioned as being one of the Greek poets in Limbo Purg. 22. 107. Historically, nothing is known of this poet except his friendship with Socrates, Plato, and Euripides, and the references to him in Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetoric.

Matt. 2. 11.

Anal. Pr. 1. 25.

Eth. 2. 1. 2. This thought is used by Dante, De Mon. 1. 15. 2, and the words from Aristotle are given in note 6 to that paragraph.

Peter Lombard (1100-1164), whom Dante places among the great doctors in the Heaven of the Sun Par. 10. 107. This reference is to his Libri Sententiarum 4. 5. 2, 3: “Christ gave to his servants the administering of baptism, but the power he retained for himself, which had he so wished he could have given them; . . . but he did not wish to, lest a servant should put his hope in a servant.” As Wicksteed remarks, Dante does not believe in the deputing of ministry without power.

Matt. 16. 19: “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

This argument from the keys of Peter is set forth by Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Principium 3. 10; S. T. 3, Suppl. Q. 17; in the Decretals of Gregory IX 1. 33. 6; 2. 1. 13. Dante’s reverence for the pontifical office can never be questioned even in the expression of sentiments the most Ghibelline. De Mon. 2. 3. 4, and note 8. The main references in the Comedy that show his attitude toward the successors of Peter are:—

Inf. 19. 90-101: “My reverence for the supreme keys . . .”

Inf. 27. 103: “I have power to lock and unlock Heaven as thou knowest; since two are the keys which my forerunner held not dear.” These are words put into the mouth of Boniface VIII.

The two keys which Statius held from Peter in his office as guardian of the gate of Purgatory are described Purg. 9. 117 ff.

Par. 23. 136: “Here triumphs, under the high Son of God, and of Mary, for his victory, . . . he who holds the keys of such glory.”

Par. 24. 34: “O eternal light of the great man to whom our Lord left the keys, which He bore below, of this wondrous joy.”

Par. 27. 46: “It was not our intention . . . that the keys which were granted to me should become a device on a banner to fight against men baptized.” So Peter rebukes the wickedness of the Church and its officials.

Par. 32. 124: “On the right behold that ancient Father of Holy Church to whom Christ entrusted the keys of this lovely flower.”

Matt. 18. 18; John 20. 23.

Rom. 7. 3. Inf. 27. 118: “Absolved he cannot be, who does not repent; nor is it possible to repent and to will at the same time, by reason of the contradiction which agrees not in it.”

Luke 22. 38. This was one of the most popular arguments in mediaeval writers for the supremacy of the Church. In the bull “Unam Sanctam” Boniface VIII says: “We are taught by the words of the gospel to recognize that two swords are in the power of this man, that is, the spiritual and temporal. For when the apostles said, ‘Here are two swords,’ the Lord did not respond, ‘It is too much,’ but, ‘It is enough.’ Both are in the power of the Church: the one the spiritual, to be used by the Church, the other the material, for the Church; the former that of priests, the latter that of kings and soldiers, to be wielded at the command and by the sufferance of the priest. One sword must be under the other, the temporal under the spiritual. . . . The spiritual instituted the temporal power, and judges whether that power is well exercised. . . . We therefore assert, define, and pronounce that it is necessary to salvation to believe that every human being is subject to the Pontiff of Rome.”

Generally with Dante the sword typifies Empire. Purg. 16. 109: “The sword is joined with the crook.” Par. 8. 145: “But ye wrest to religion such an one as shall have been born to be girt with the sword, and ye make him a king who is a man of sermons.”

Luke 22. 7.

Luke 22. 14.

Luke 22. 35, 36.

Luke 22. 38.

Matt. 16. 15, 16, 21, 22, 23.

Matt. 17. 4.

Matt. 14. 28. Peter’s faith on this occasion is the subject of praise again in Par. 24. 34: “O eternal light of the great man to whom our Lord left the keys, which he bore below, of this wondrous joy, try this man concerning points easy and hard as pleases thee, about the faith by which thou didst go upon the sea.”

Matt. 26. 33, 35.

Mark 14. 29.

Luke 22. 33.

John 13. 6, 8.

John 18. 10; Matt. 26. 51; Mark 14. 47; Luke 22. 50.

John 20. 5, 6. Dante’s second reference to this incident is in Par. 24. 125: “O holy father, O spirit who seest that which thou so believest, that thou didst outdo younger feet toward the sepulchre.”

John 21. 7.

John 21. 21.

“Head Shepherd” is in the Latin “Archimandrita.” St. Francis is given this name Par. 11. 99: “The holy desire of this head shepherd of his flock was crowned with a second diadem by the eternal spirit through Honorius.” And in Letter 9. 6 Dante calls the unfaithful officers of the Church, “Archimandrites throughout the world in name alone.”

Matt. 10. 34, 35.

Acts 1. 1.

Near the end of the eighth century the decretals and donation of Constantine were forged, documents which purported that when that Emperor removed his capital to Byzantium, 324 ad, he left Rome in order to give to the Church temporal sway in the western world. That this donation was a forgery was not discovered until 1440 by Laurentinus Valla. See Gibbon, vol. 6. 49 (notes 68-76), the Milman-Smith edition. It is scarcely necessary to add that Dante had firm faith in the genuineness of the donation.

Inf. 27. 94: “Constantine sought Sylvester within Soracte to heal him of his leprosy.” This legend Butler thinks Dante took from Brunetto, Trésor, Bk. 1, Pt. 2, c. 87, but Toynbee traces it to the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine. See Toynbee, Studies, p. 297. Cf. De Regim. Princ. 3. 16.

The donation is mentioned De Mon. 2. 12. 2; 2. 13. 5; 3. 13. 4.

Inf. 19. 115: “Ah, Constantine, of how great ill was mother, not thy conversion, but the dowry which the first rich pope got from thee.”

In the vision of Church and Empire, Purg. 32, the worldly wealth of the papacy is thus described l. 124: “Next from thence, whence it had before come, I saw the eagle come down into the ark of the car, and leave it feathered with itself;” line 136: “That which remained, like ground alive with herbage, covered itself again with feathers, offered haply with sound and benign intention, and was covered again.”

The eagle describes Constantine Par. 20. 55: “The second who follows, with the laws and with me, under a good intention which bore ill fruit, to give way to the Pastor, made himself a Greek. Now knows he how the ill deduced from his good work is not harmful to him, albeit that the world be thereby destroyed.”

John 19. 23, 24, 34. The seamless robe is again used as the type of undivided monarchy De Mon. 1. 16, and note 6.

1 Cor. 3. 11.

Matt. 16. 18.

Can. 8. 5 (Vulg.). The English version has not the words “deliciis effluens,” “abounding in delights.” Dante quotes the verse, as here, in Conv. 2. 6. 2, as definitely signifying the Church.

Witte refers to Engelbertus Admonteus, De Ortu et Fine Rom. Imp. 18: “It was not permitted that the Emperor Hadrian or Jovinian should surrender the imperial boundaries, . . . nor has it been, nor will it be permitted to any Emperor, because then would it fall from the name and dignity of Augustus, which means that the Empire should be augmented and not diminished.”

Eth. 4. 1. 8: “The liberal man will give for the sake of the honorable, and will give properly, for he will give to proper objects, in proper quantities, at proper times.”

Matt. 10. 9.

Luke 9. 3; 10. 4.

De Mon. 2. 12. 1, and note 2.

“Advocavit” in the original, and closely related to “advocati” in the following sentence, the “advocates” or “those called.”

Charlemagne became king of the Frankish people in 771; petitioned for aid against the Lombards by Pope Hadrian, he defeated Desiderius in 774, and became king of the Lombards; he was made Emperor of the West by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day, 800. Pope Hadrian did not give Charlemagne the imperial dignity. Dante places Charlemagne among the defenders of the faith in the Heaven of Mars Par. 18. 43.

Par. 6. 94: “And when the Lombard tooth bit the Holy Church, under its wings great Charles conquering succoured her.” Cf. De Regim. Princ. 10. 10, 18.

Michael I reigned in Constantinople from 811 to 813. The ruler at the time of Charlemagne was the Empress Irene (797-802).

Otto I was Emperor 962-973. In 963 the Roman synod elected his nominee for the papacy, but in the following year, while the Emperor was absent from Rome, they deposed Leo III and put Benedict V in the chair. On Otto’s return in 964, he sent Benedict to Hamburg and reinstated Leo.

Metaphys. 10. 1. In Conv. 1. 1. 1, as here, Dante calls the Metaphysics the First Philosophy.

The two main categories are those of substance and accident. Under accident are the sub-categories of relation, position, quality, etc. In the category of substance, Pope and Emperor are measurable by the same standard. In the category of accident, they are in the same sub-genus of relation, and in different but coördinate species of the sub-genus. So in the category of accident they are not measurable by the same standard. In the text Dante uses the word “praedicamentum” for category, and in De Mon. 3. 15. 4 he calls Aristotle’s Categories by that name.

Then the best man might be other than the Pope or Emperor.

Eth. 10. 5. 10: “Excellence and the good man, so far forth as he is good, are the measure of everything.”

“Quum sint relationes superpositionis.”

Acts 25. 10.

Acts 27. 24.

Acts 28. 19.

Phil. 1. 23.

Lev. 2. 11.

Lev. 11. 43.

Dante seems to imply that things brought to pass through nature are brought to pass through a secondary agent.

Matt. 16. 18.

John 17. 4.

Num. 18. 20: “And the Lord spake unto Aaron, Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them. I am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of Israel.”

Purg. 16. 131: “The sons of Levi were exempted from the heritage.”

Matt. 10. 9: “Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses;” Mark 6. 8; Luke 9. 3; 10. 4; 22. 35.

Metaphys. 8. 8. The priority of energy or activity to capacity or potentiality is discussed here at length.

Phys. 7. 3. Conv. 3. 15. 4: “The natural desire of everything is regulated according to the capacity of the thing desiring; otherwise it would oppose itself, which is impossible, and nature would have made it in vain, which is also impossible.” De Mon. 1. 3. 1; 1. 10. 1; 2. 7. 2, repeat the same idea.

Phys. 2. 1: “Form is nature.”

Metaphys. 6. 7. 4: “From art are generated those things of whatsoever there is a form in the soul. But I mean by form the essence or very nature of a thing.” L. c. 6. 9: “Art is form.” S. T. 1-2. 94. 3: “Every being is naturally inclined to an activity befitting itself, according to its form.”

John 13. 15.

John 21. 19.

John 18. 36.

Ps. 95. 5.

De Mon. 2. 3, notes 6 and 13.

Categ. c. 12. De Mon. 3. 12, note 2.

De Mon. 1. 7. 1. Purg. 32. 100: “Here thou shalt be a little time a woodman, and with me shalt thou be without end, a citizen of that Rome whereof Christ is a Roman.”

De Causis, Lect. 2: “Generated intelligence comprehends both nature and the horizon of nature, that is to say the soul, for it is above nature.”

The nature and origin of the human soul is discussed Conv. 4. 21. In Purg. 25 Statius discourses on generation and the soul, and its attributes find due place there. Other references are:—

Conv. 4. 21. 2: “We must know that man is composed of soul and body; but of the soul is that nobility . . . which is as the seed of the Divine virtue.”

Par. 7. 139: “The soul of every brute and of the plants, being endued by complexion with potency, draws in the ray and the movement of the holy lights. But your life the highest Goodness inspires.”

So Thomas Aquinas, S. T. 1. 76. 4. 4: “The soul is the substantial form of man;” so also l. c. 1-2. 94. 3: “The proper form of man is his rational soul.”

De Anima 2. 2. 21.

De Part. Anim. 3. 1.

Conv. 3. 15. 5: “Felicity . . . is action according to virtue, in the perfect life.” So Aristotle says in Eth. 1. 13. 1: “Happiness is a certain energy of the soul according to perfect goodness.” Dante uses this definition again Conv. 4. 17. 14.

Purg. 28-33 describes the terrestrial Paradise and its place in the order of the universe.

The whole of the Paradiso develops the gradual revelation of God’s self to man. For Dante’s valuation of the active and speculative life, see De Mon. 1. 3. 3, and note 14; 1. 4, and note 1. See Conv. 2. 5, many parts of Conv. 3, and Conv. 4. 21, 22, 23.

Conv. 4. 22. 5: “The use of the mind is double, that is, practical and speculative. . . . Its practical use is to act through us virtuously, that is, righteously, by temperance, fortitude, and justice; the speculative is not to operate actively in us, but to consider the works of God and nature; and the one and the other use make up our beatitude.”

Conv. 4. 22. 9: “In our contemplation God is always in advance of us; nor can we ever attain to Him here, who is our supreme beatitude.”

Conv. 4. 22. 10: “Our beatitude . . . we may first find imperfectly in the active life, that is, in the exercise of the moral virtues, and then almost perfectly in the contemplative life, that is, in the exercise of the intellectual virtues.”

S. T. 1. 2. 3. 8: “The last and perfect happiness of man cannot be other than in the vision of the Divine Essence.”

Conv. 4. 17 treats of the twelve moral virtues, which include the cardinal,—fortitude, temperance, liberality, munificence, magnanimity, love of honor, meekness, affability, truth, discretion, justice, and prudence.

Canz. 3. 5: “All virtues take their rise from one sole root—that primal virtue, which makes mankind blest in acting it—which is the elective habit.”

The cardinal virtues were the active virtues, as the theological were the contemplative. So Purg. 31. 107: “Before that Beatrice descended to the world were we ordained to her for handmaids.” And in Purg. 29. 130 the cardinal virtues are on the left of the symbolic car.

The theological virtues are called in Purg. 7. 34, “the three holy virtues.” Purg. 31. 111: “The three beyond who look more deeply.” They are on the right of the car in Purg. 29. 121: “Three ladies, whirling on the right wheel’s side, came dancing, the one so red that hardly would she have been marked with fire; the second was as if her flesh and bones had been made out of emerald; the third appeared snow but lately driven.”

Thomas Aquinas discusses the cardinal virtues S. T. 1-2. 61; the theological virtues S. T. 1-2. 62.

Conv. 3. 14. 5: “We believe that every miracle may be reasonable to a higher intellect, and therefore possible. Whence our precious faith has its origin, from which comes the hope of things desired, but not seen; and from this are born the works of charity. By which three virtues we ascend to philosophize in that celestial Athens, where Stoics, and Peripatetics, and Epicureans, by the art of Eternal Truth, harmoniously concur in one desire.”

De Mon. 2. 8, and note 1; De Mon. 3. 16. 6.

This figure, which compares man to a horse needing bit and spur to keep him in his road and under control of his rider, is almost as much a favorite with Dante as that of the wax and seal. He must have found it originally in Ps. 32. 9: “Be ye not as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.” The most important uses of this metaphor are as follows:—

Conv. 4. 9. 3: “The Emperor . . . is the rider of human will, and it is very evident how wildly this horse goes over the field without a rider.”

Conv. 4. 26. 4: “This appetite . . . should obey the reason, which guides it with curb and spur.”

Purg. 6. 88: “What boots it that Justinian should have put thy bit in order again, if the saddle is empty?”

Purg. 13. 40: “This circle scourges the sin of envy, and therefore are the lashes of the scourge wielded by love. The rein will have to be of the contrary sound.”

Purg. 14. 143: “That was the hard bit which ought to hold the man within his bound.”

Purg. 16. 94: “It behoved to lay down laws for a bit; it behoved to have a king who should discern of the true city at least the tower.”

Purg. 20. 55: “I found so fast within my hands the rein of government of the kingdom, and such power of new acquirement, and so full of friends, that to the widowed crown was the head of my son promoted.” The words are Hugh Capet’s. L. c. 22. 19; 25. 119: “Through this place needs one to keep the rein tight on the eyes, because for a little cause one might go astray.” L. c. 28. 71: “The Hellespont, . . . a bridle still to pride of men.”

Purg. 33. 141: “The bridle of my art lets me go no further.”

Par. 7. 26: “For not enduring to the faculty that wills any curb, for its own advantage, that man who was never born, in damning himself, damned all his progeny.”

Par. 5. 76: “Ye have the old and new Testament, and the Pastor of the Church who guides you; let this suffice you to your salvation.” See De Mon. 3. 16. 5, and note 9.

From the philosophic nature of the Convito and the Comedy it is impossible to indicate here even the most important sections devoted to philosophy, classical or mediaeval. Conv. 3. 11. 2 defines philosophy as “No other than a friendship for knowledge; wherefore any one might be called a philosopher, according to that natural love which inspires all men with a desire for knowledge.” L. c. 3. 11. 3: “Philosophy has for subject the understanding, and for form an almost divine love for the intelligible.” L. c. 3. 12. 4: “Philosophy is a loving use of Wisdom; which exists above all in God, because in Him is supreme Wisdom, and supreme Love, and supreme Power, which cannot exist elsewhere, except as it proceeds from Him.”

In Conv. 4. 6. 9 relations are established between philosophic and imperial authority. “When joined together they are most useful and most full of power. . . . Unite the philosophical and the imperial authority to rule well and perfectly.”

Philosophy is, Purg. 6. 45, “A light betwixt the truth and understanding.”

Purg. 18. 46: “All that reason has seen I can tell thee.”

“In ainola ista mortalium.” The same word is used in the Italian form, “aiuola,” in Par. 22. 151 and 27. 86.

De Consol. Phil. 3. 9: “All things Thou dost produce after the Divine Exemplar, Thou the most beautiful, carrying in thy mind the beautiful world.”

This idea of God’s foresight and the foreordination of all things in the universe is found repeatedly in all Dante’s writings. See quotations in notes to De Mon. 1. 6.

Inf. 7. 72: “He, whose knowledge transcends all, made the heavens, and gave them their guide.”

Par. 18. 118: “The Mind wherein thy motion and thy virtue have their origin.”

“In the Holy Roman Empire the college of lay and ecclesiastical princes in whom the right of choosing the King of the Romans was vested. With the extinction of the Carolingian line, after the breaking up of the Empire of Charles the Great, the kingship in Germany became elective, the right of election residing in certain of the great feudatories, though just in whom or on what grounds is not clear from the early mediaeval accounts. An electoral body is vaguely mentioned in chronicles of 1152, 1198, and 1230, but there is no clear indication as to who composed the body. . . . The electoral college was first clearly defined in 1356 in the Golden Bull, a constitution for the Holy Roman Empire, issued by Emperor Charles IV. This document prescribed the exact form and manner of election of the ‘King of the Romans and future Emperor.’ Seven electors are there named, each holding some hereditary office in the Imperial court. (1) Archbishop of Mainz, as Archchancellor of the Holy Roman Empire for Germany; (2) Archbishop of Cologne, as Archchancellor for Italy; (3) Archbishop of Treves, as Archchancellor for the Gallic Provinces and Arles; (4) King of Bohemia, Arch-Cupbearer; (5) Count Palatine of the Rhine, Arch-Steward; (6) Duke of Saxony, Arch-Marshal; (7) Margrave of Brandenburg, Arch-Chamberlain. It seems that the electors had no legal powers beyond that of election, and though the German princes held that an election by the German electors held for the Holy Roman Empire, the popes contended that they alone as Vicars of God could bestow the Imperial dignity.”—New International Encyc. See also Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, c. 14; Hallam, Middle Ages, chap. 8, part 2; Turner, Germanic Constitution (New York, 1888); the Golden Bull is translated in Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (London, 1892).

This harmonious rule of two powers by the acknowledgment of filial relationship between Pope and Emperor, by recognition of the differing character of their functions, is prayed for by Dante in many parts of the Convito and Comedy, and is stated most briefly and forcibly in Purg. 16. 107: “Rome, that made the good world, was wont to have two suns, that showed the one and the other road, both of the world and of God.”

The close of the Letter to the Princes and Peoples of Italy is strangely like the close of the De Monarchia. Proclaiming Henry VII as the rightful Emperor, Dante writes: “This is he whom Peter, the Vicar of God, admonishes us to honor; whom Clement, now the successor of Peter, illuminates with the light of the apostolic benediction, in order that where the spiritual ray does not suffice, the splendor of the lesser light may illumine.’ ”

The dual organization of Church and Empire is also set forth in symbolic fashion in Inf. 14. 102 ff., and in Dante’s vision Purg. 32.