CANTO XI

The Divine Comedy - Paradise

by Dante Alighieri

Translated by Charles Eliot Norton

CANTO XI, THE DIVINE COMEDY - PARADISE by Alighieri Dante
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The Vanity of worldly desires,--St. Thomas Aquinas
undertakes to solve two doubts perplexing Dante.--He narrates the
life of St. Francis of Assisi.

O insensate care of mortals, how defective are those syllogisms
which make thee downward beat thy wings! One was going after the
Laws, and one after the Aphorisms,[1] and one following the
priesthood, and one to reign by force or by sophisms, and one to
rob, and one to civic business; one, involved in pleasure of the
flesh, was wearying himself, and one was giving himself to
idleness, when I, loosed from all these things, with Beatrice,
was thus gloriously received on high in Heaven.

[1] The Aphorisms of Hippocrates, meaning here, the study of
medicine.


When each[1] had returned unto that point of the circle at which
it was at first, it stayed, as a candle in a candlestick. And
within that light which first had spoken to me I heard, as
smiling it began, making itself more clear, "Even as I am
resplendent with its radiance, so, looking into the Eternal
Light, I apprehend whence thou drawest the occasion of thy
thoughts. Thou art perplexed, and hast the wish that my speech be
bolted again in language so open and so plain that it may be
level to thy sense, where just now I said, 'where well one
fattens,' and there where I said, 'the second has not been born;'
and here is need that one distinguish well.

[1] Each of the lights which had encircled. Beatrice and Dante.


"The Providence which governs the world with that counsel, in
which every created vision is vanquished ere it reach the depth,
in order that the bride[1] of Him, who with loud cries espoused
her with His blessed blood, might go toward her beloved, secure
in herself and also more faithful to Him, ordained two princes in
her favor, who on this side and that should be to her for guides.
The one was all seraphic in ardor,[2] the other, through wisdom,
was a splendor of cherubic light[3] on earth. Of the one I will
speak, because both are spoken of in praising one, whichever be
taken, for unto one end were their works.

[1] The Church.

[2] St. Francis of Assisi

[3] St. Dominic.

"Between the Tupino and the water[1] which descends from the
hill chosen by the blessed Ubaldo, hangs the fertile slope of a
high mountain, wherefrom Perugia at Porta Sole[2] feeleth cold
and heat, while behind it Nocera and Gualdo weep because of their
heavy yoke.[3] On that slope, where it most breaks its steepness,
rose a Sun upon the world, as this one sometimes does from the
Ganges. Therefore let him who talks of that place not say
Ascesi,[4] for he would speak short, but Orient,[5] if be would
speak properly. He was not yet very far from his rising when he
began to make the earth feel some comfort from his great virtue.
For, still a youth, he ran to strife[6] with his father for a
lady such as unto whom, even as unto death, no one unlocks the
gate of pleasure; and before his spiritual court et coram
patre[7] to her he had himself united; thereafter from day to day
he loved her more ardently. She, deprived of her first
husband,[8] for one thousand and one hundred years and more,
despised and obscure, had stood without wooing till he came;[9]
nor had it availed[10] to hear, that he, who caused fear to all
the world, found her at the sound of his voice secure with
Amyclas;[11] nor had it availed to have been constant and bold,
so that where Mary remained below, she wept with Christ upon the
cross. But that I may not proceed too obscurely, take henceforth
in my diffuse speech Francis and Poverty for these lovers. Their
concord and their glad semblances made love, and wonder, and
sweet regard to be the cause of holy thoughts;[12] so that the
venerable Bernard first bared his feet,[13] and ran following
such great peace, and, running, it seemed to him that he was
slow. Oh unknown riches! oh fertile good! Egidius bares his feet
and Sylvester bares his feet, following the bridegroom; so
pleasing is the bride. Then that father and that master goes on
his way with his lady, and with that family which the humble cord
was now girding.[14] Nor did baseness of heart weigh down his
brow at being son of Pietro Bernardone,[15] nor at appearing
marvellously despised; but royally he opened his bard intention
to Innocent, and received from bim the first seal for his
Order.[16] After the poor people had increased behind him, whose
marvellous life would be better sung in glory of the heavens, the
holy purpose of this archimandrite[17] was adorned with a second
crown by the Eternal Spirit, through Honorius.[18] And when,
through thirst for martyrdom, he had preached Christ and the rest
who followed him in the proud presence of the Sultan,[19] and
because he found the people too unripe for conversion, and in
order not to stay in vain, had returned to the fruit of the
Italian grass,[20] on the rude rock,[21] between the Tiber and
the Arno, he took from Christ the last seal,[22] which his limbs
bore for two years. When it pleased Him, who had allotted him to
such great good, to draw him up to the reward which he had gained
in making himself abject, he commended his most dear lady to his
brethren as to rightful heirs, and commanded them to love her
faithfully; and from her lap, his illustrious soul willed to
depart, returning to its realm, and for his body he willed no
other bier.[23]

[1] The Chiassi, which flows from the hill chosen for his
hermitage by St. Ubaldo.

[2] The gate of Perugia, which fronts Monte Subasio, on which
Assisi lies, some fifteen miles to the south.

[3] Towns, southeast of Assisi, oppressed by their rulers.

[4] So the name Assisi was sometimes spelled, and here with a
play on ascesi (I have risen).

[5] As the sun at the vernal equinox, the sacred season of the
Creation and the Resurrection, rises in the due east or orient,
represented in the geographical system of the time by the Ganges,
so the place where this new Sun of righteousness arose should be
called Orient.

[6] Devoting himself to poverty against his father's will.

[7] Before the Bishop of Assisi, and "in presence of his
father," he renounced his worldly possessions.

[8] Christ.

[9] St. Francis was born in 1182.

[10] To procure suitors for her,

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

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

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

[14] The cord for their only girdle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[21] Mount Alvernia.

[22] The Stigmata.

[23] St. Francis died in 1226.


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

[1] How holy he must have been.

[2] St. Dominic.

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