Dante's Paradiso: Canto X

The Fourth Heaven, the Sun: Theologians and Fathers of the Church. The First Circle. St. Thomas of Aquinas.

Looking into his Son with all the Love
   Which each of them eternally breathes forth,
   The Primal and unutterable Power

Whate'er before the mind or eye revolves
   With so much order made, there can be none 5
   Who this beholds without enjoying Him.

Lift up then, Reader, to the lofty wheels
   With me thy vision straight unto that part
   Where the one motion on the other strikes,

And there begin to contemplate with joy 10
   That Master's art, who in himself so loves it
   That never doth his eye depart therefrom.

Behold how from that point goes branching off
   The oblique circle, which conveys the planets,
   To satisfy the world that calls upon them; 15

And if their pathway were not thus inflected,
   Much virtue in the heavens would be in vain,
   And almost every power below here dead.

If from the straight line distant more or less
   Were the departure, much would wanting be 20
   Above and underneath of mundane order.

Remain now, Reader, still upon thy bench,
   In thought pursuing that which is foretasted,
   If thou wouldst jocund be instead of weary.

I've set before thee; henceforth feed thyself, 25
   For to itself diverteth all my care
   That theme whereof I have been made the scribe.

The greatest of the ministers of nature,
   Who with the power of heaven the world imprints
   And measures with his light the time for us, 30

With that part which above is called to mind
   Conjoined, along the spirals was revolving,
   Where each time earlier he presents himself;

And I was with him; but of the ascending
   I was not conscious, saving as a man 35
   Of a first thought is conscious ere it come;

And Beatrice, she who is seen to pass
   From good to better, and so suddenly
   That not by time her action is expressed,

How lucent in herself must she have been! 40
   And what was in the sun, wherein I entered,
   Apparent not by colour but by light,

I, though I call on genius, art, and practice,
   Cannot so tell that it could be imagined;
   Believe one can, and let him long to see it. 45

And if our fantasies too lowly are
   For altitude so great, it is no marvel,
   Since o'er the sun was never eye could go.

Such in this place was the fourth family
   Of the high Father, who forever sates it, 50
   Showing how he breathes forth and how begets.

And Beatrice began: "Give thanks, give thanks
   Unto the Sun of Angels, who to this
   Sensible one has raised thee by his grace!"

Never was heart of mortal so disposed 55
   To worship, nor to give itself to God
   With all its gratitude was it so ready,

As at those words did I myself become;
   And all my love was so absorbed in Him,
   That in oblivion Beatrice was eclipsed. 60

Nor this displeased her; but she smiled at it
   So that the splendour of her laughing eyes
   My single mind on many things divided.

Lights many saw I, vivid and triumphant,
   Make us a centre and themselves a circle, 65
   More sweet in voice than luminous in aspect.

Thus girt about the daughter of Latona
   We sometimes see, when pregnant is the air,
   So that it holds the thread which makes her zone.

Within the court of Heaven, whence I return, 70
   Are many jewels found, so fair and precious
   They cannot be transported from the realm;

And of them was the singing of those lights.
   Who takes not wings that he may fly up thither,
   The tidings thence may from the dumb await! 75

As soon as singing thus those burning suns
   Had round about us whirled themselves three times,
   Like unto stars neighbouring the steadfast poles,

Ladies they seemed, not from the dance released,
   But who stop short, in silence listening 80
   Till they have gathered the new melody.

And within one I heard beginning: "When
   The radiance of grace, by which is kindled
   True love, and which thereafter grows by loving,

Within thee multiplied is so resplendent 85
   That it conducts thee upward by that stair,
   Where without reascending none descends,

Who should deny the wine out of his vial
   Unto thy thirst, in liberty were not
   Except as water which descends not seaward. 90

Fain wouldst thou know with what plants is enflowered
   This garland that encircles with delight
   The Lady fair who makes thee strong for heaven.

Of the lambs was I of the holy flock
   Which Dominic conducteth by a road 95
   Where well one fattens if he strayeth not.

He who is nearest to me on the right
   My brother and master was; and he Albertus
   Is of Cologne, I Thomas of Aquinum.

If thou of all the others wouldst be certain, 100
   Follow behind my speaking with thy sight
   Upward along the blessed garland turning.

That next effulgence issues from the smile
   Of Gratian, who assisted both the courts
   In such wise that it pleased in Paradise. 105

The other which near by adorns our choir
   That Peter was who, e'en as the poor widow,
   Offered his treasure unto Holy Church.

The fifth light, that among us is the fairest,
   Breathes forth from such a love, that all the world 110
   Below is greedy to learn tidings of it.

Within it is the lofty mind, where knowledge
   So deep was put, that, if the true be true,
   To see so much there never rose a second.

Thou seest next the lustre of that taper, 115
   Which in the flesh below looked most within
   The angelic nature and its ministry.

Within that other little light is smiling
   The advocate of the Christian centuries,
   Out of whose rhetoric Augustine was furnished. 120

Now if thou trainest thy mind's eye along
   From light to light pursuant of my praise,
   With thirst already of the eighth thou waitest.

By seeing every good therein exults
   The sainted soul, which the fallacious world 125
   Makes manifest to him who listeneth well;

The body whence 'twas hunted forth is lying
   Down in Cieldauro, and from martyrdom
   And banishment it came unto this peace.

See farther onward flame the burning breath 130
   Of Isidore, of Beda, and of Richard
   Who was in contemplation more than man.

This, whence to me returneth thy regard,
   The light is of a spirit unto whom
   In his grave meditations death seemed slow. 135

It is the light eternal of Sigier,
   Who, reading lectures in the Street of Straw,
   Did syllogize invidious verities."

Then, as a horologe that calleth us
   What time the Bride of God is rising up 140
   With matins to her Spouse that he may love her,

Wherein one part the other draws and urges,
   Ting! ting! resounding with so sweet a note,
   That swells with love the spirit well disposed,

Thus I beheld the glorious wheel move round, 145
   And render voice to voice, in modulation
   And sweetness that can not be comprehended,

Excepting there where joy is made eternal.

NOTES

1 - 1

The Heaven of the Sun, “a good planet and imperial,” says Brunetto Latini. Dante makes it the symbol of Arithmetic. Convito, II. 14: “The Heaven of the Sun may be compared to Arithmetic on account of two properties; the first is, that with its light all the other stars are informed; the second is, that the eye cannot behold it. And these two properties are in Arithmetic, for with its light all the sciences are illuminated, since their subjects are all considered under some numbers, and in the consideration thereof we always proceed with numbers; as in natural science the subject is the movable body, which movable body has in it raton of continuity, and this has in it ratio of infinite number. And the chief consideration of natural science is to consider the principles of natural things, which are three, namely, matter, species, and form; in which this number is visible, not only in all together, but, if we consider well, in each one separately. Therefore Pythagoras, according to Aristotle in the first book of his Physics, gives the odd and even as the principles of natural things, considering all things to be number. The other property of the Sun is also seen in number, to which Arithmetic belongs, for the eye of the intellect cannot behold it, for number considered in itself is infinite; and this we cannot comprehend.”

In this Heaven of the Sun are seen the spirits of theologians and Fathers of the Church; and its influences, according to Albumasar, cited by Buti, are as follows: “The Sun signifies the vital soul, light and splendor, reason and intellect, science and the measure of life; it signifies kings, princes and leaders, nobles and magnates and congregations of men, strength and victory, voluptuousness, beauty and grandeur, subtleness of mind, pride and praise, good desire of kingdom and of subjects, and great love of gold, and affluence of speech, and delight in neatness and beauty. It signifies faith and the worship of God, judges and wise men, fathers and brothers and mediators; it joins itself to men and mingles among them, it gives what is asked for, and is strong in vengeance, that is to say, it punishes rebels and malefactors.”

2 - 2

Adam of St. Victor, Hymn to the Holy Ghost: –

“Veni, Creator Spiritus,
Spiritus receator,
Tu dans, tu datus coelitus,
Tu donum, tu donator;
Tu lex, tu digitus,
Alens et alitus,
Spirans et spiritus,
Spiratus et spirator.”

9 - 9

Where the Zodiac crosses the Equator, and the motion of the planets, which is parallel to the former, comes into apparent collision with that of the fixed stars, which is parallel to the latter.

14 - 14

The Zodiac, which cuts the Equator obliquely.

16 - 16

Milton, Par. Lost, X.668: –

“Some say, he bid his angels turn askance
The poles of earth, twice ten degrees and more,
From the sun's axle; they with labor pushed
Oblique the centric globe: some say, the sun
Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road
Like-distant breadth to Taurus with the seven
Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins,
Up to the tropic Crab: thence down amain
By Leo, and the Virgin, and the Scales,
As deep as Capricorn; to bring in change
Of seasons to each clime: else had the spring
Perpetual smiled on earth with vernant flowers,
Equal in days and nights, except to those
Beyond the polar circles; to them day
Had unbenighted shone; while the low sun,
To recompense his distance, in their sight
Had rounded still the horizon, and not known
Or east or west; which had forbid the snow
From cold Estotiland, and south as far
Beneath Magellan.”

28 - 28

The Sun.

31 - 31

The Sun in Aries, as indicated in line 9; that being the sign in which the Sun is at the vernal equinox.

32 - 32

Such is the apparent motion of the Sun round the earth, as he rises earlier and earlier in Spring.

48 - 48

No eye has even seen any light greater than that of the Sun, nor can we conceive of any greater.

51 - 51

How the son is begotten of the Father, and how from these two is breathed forth the Holy Ghost. The Heaven of the Sun being the Fourth Heaven, the spirits seen in it are called the fourth family of the Father; and to these theologians is revealed the mystery of the Trinity.

67 - 67

The moon with a halo about her.

82 - 82

The spirit of Thomas Aquinas.

87 - 87

The stairway of Jacob's dream, with its angels ascending and descending.

89 - 89

Whoever should refuse to gratify thy desire for knowledge, would no more follow his natural inclination than water which did not flow downward.

98 - 98

Albertus Magnus, at whose twenty-one ponderous folios one gazes with awe and amazement, was born of a noble Swabian family at the beginning of the thirteenth century. In his youth he studied at Paris and at Padua; became a Dominican monk, and, retiring to a convent in Cologne, taught in the schools of that city. He became Provincial of his Order in Germany; and was afterward made Grand-Master of the Palace at Rome, and then Bishop of Ratisbon. Resigning his bishopric in 1262, he returned to his convent in Cologne, where he died in 1280, leaving behind him great fame for his learning and his labor.

Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VIII. 259, says of him: “Albert the Great at once awed by his immense erudition and appalled his age. His name, the Universal Doctor, was the homage to his all-embracing knowledge. He quotes, as equally familiar, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Jewish philosophers. He was the first Schoolman who lectured on Aristotle himself, on Aristotle from Graeco-Latin or Arabo-Latin copies. The whole range of the Stagirite's physical and metaphysical philosophy was within the scope of Albert's teaching. In later days he was called the Ape of Aristotle; he had dared to introduce Aristotle into the Sanctuary itself. One of his Treatises is a refutation of the Arabian Averrhoes. Nor is it Aristotle and Averrhoes alone that come within the pale of Albert's erudition; the commentators and glossators of Aristotle, the whole circle of the Arabians, are quoted; their opinions, their reasonings, even their words, with the utmost familiarity. But with Albert Theology was still the master-science. The Bishop of Ratisbon was of unimpeached orthodoxy; the vulgar only, in his wonderful knowledge of the secrets of Nature, in his studies of Natural History, could not but see something of the magician. Albert had the ambition of reconciling Plato and Aristotle, and of reconciling this harmonized Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy with Christian Divinity. He thus, in some degree, misrepresented or misconceived both the Greeks; he hardened Plato into Aristotelism, expanded Aristotelism into Platonism; and his Christianity, though Albert was a devout man, while it constantly subordinates, in strong and fervent language, knowledge to faith and love, became less a religion than a philosophy.”

99 - 99

Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor of the Schools. Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VII. 265, gives the following sketch of him: –

“Of all the schoolmen Thomas Aquinas has left the greatest
name. He was a son of the Count of Aquino, a rich fief in
the kingdom of Naples. His mother, Theodora, was of the
line of the old Norman kings; his brothers, Reginald and
Landolph, held high rank in the Imperial armies. His family
was connected by marriage with the Hohenstaufens; they had
Swabian blood in their veins, and so the great schoolman
was of the race of Frederick II. Monasticism seized on
Thomas in his early youth; he became an inmate of Monte
Casino; at sixteen years of age he caught the more fiery and
vigorous enthusiasm of the Dominicans. By them he was sent
– no unwilling proselyte and pupil – to France. He was
seized by his worldly brothers, and sent back to Naples; he
was imprisoned in one of the family castles, but resisted
even the fond entreaties of his mother and his sisters. He
persisted in his pious disobedience, his holy hardness of
heart; he was released after two years' imprisonment – it
might seem strange – at the command of the Emperor
Frederick II. The godless Emperor, as he was called, gave
Thomas to the Church. Aquinas took the irrevocable vow of a
Friar Preacher. He became a scholar of Albert the Great at
Cologne and at Paris. He was dark, silent, unapproachable
even by his brethren, perpetually wrapt in profound
meditation. He was called, in mockery, the great dumb ox of
Sicily. Albert questioned the mute disciple on the most
deep and knotty points of theology; he found, as he
confessed, his equal, his superior. 'That dumb ox will make
the world resound with his doctrines.' With Albert the
faithful disciple returned to Cologne. Again he went back
to Paris, received his academic degree, and taught with
universal wonder. Under Alexander IV. he stood up in Rome
in defence of his Order against the eloquent William de St.
Amour; he repudiated for his Order, and condemned by his
authority, the prophesies of the Abbot Joachim. He taught
at Cologne with Albert the Great; also at Paris, at Rome at
Orvieto, at Viterbo, at Perugia. Where he taught, the world
listened in respectful silence. He was acknowledged by two
Popes, Urban IV. and Clement IV., as the first theologian
of the age. He refused the Archbishopric of Naples. He was
expected at the Council of Lyons, as the authority before
whom all Christendom might be expected to bow down. He died
ere he had passed the borders of Naples, at the Abbey of
Rossa Nuova, near Terracina, at the age of forty-eight.
Dark tales were told of his death; only the wickedness of
man could deprive the world so early of such a wonder. The
University of Paris claimed, but in vain, the treasure of
his mortal remains. He was canonized by John XXII.

”Thomas Aquinas is throughout, above all, the Theologian.
God and the soul of man are the only objects truly worthy of his
philosophic investigation. This is the function of the Angelic
Doctor, the mission of the Angel of the Schools. In his works,
or rather in his one great work, is the final result of all which
has been decided by Pope or Council, taught by the Fathers,
accepted by tradition, argued in the schools, inculcated in the
confessional. The Sun of Theology is the authentic,
authoritative, acknowledged code of Latin Christianity. We
cannot but contrast this vast work with the original Gospel: to
this bulk has grown the New Testament, or rather the doctrinal
and moral part of the New Testament. But Aquinas is an
intellectual theologian: he approaches more nearly than most
philosophers, certainly than most divines, to pure embodied
intellect. He is perfectly passionless; he has no polemic
indignation, nothing of the Churchman's jealousy and suspicion;
he has no fear of the result of any investigation; he hates
nothing, hardly heresy; loves nothing, unless perhaps naked,
abstract truth. In his serene confidence that all must end in
good, he moves the most startling and even perilous questions, as
if they were the most indifferent, the very Being of God. God
must be revealed by syllogistic process. Himself inwardly
conscious of the absolute harmony of his own intellectual and
moral being, he places sin not so much in the will as in the
understanding. The perfection of man is the perfection of his
intelligence. He examines with the same perfect self-command, it
might almost be said apathy, the converse as well as the proof of
the most vital religious truths. He is nearly as consummate a
sceptic, almost atheist, as he is a divine and theologian.
Secure, as it should seem, in impenetrable armor, he has not only
no apprehension, but seems not to suppose the possibility of
danger; he has nothing of the boastfulness of self-confidence,
but, in calm assurance of victory, gives every advantage to his
adversary. On both sides of every question he casts the argument
into one of his clear, distinct syllogisms, and calmly places
himself as Arbiter, and passes judgment in one or a series of
still more unanswerable syllogisms. He has assigned its
unassailable province to Church authority, to tradition or the
Fathers, faith and works; but beyond, within the proper sphere of
philosopy, he asserts full freedom. There is no Father, even St.
Augustine, who may not be examined by the fearless intellect.“

104 - 104

Gratian was a Franciscan friar, and teacher in the school of the convent of St. Felix in Bologna. He wrote the Decretum Gratiani, or ”Concord of the Discordant Canons,“ in which he brought into agreement the laws of the courts secular and ecclesiastical.

107 - 107

Peter Lombard, the ”Master of Sentences,“ so called from his Libri Sententiarum. In the dedication of this work to the Church he says that he wishes ”to contribute, like the poor widow, his mite to the treasury of the Lord.“ The following account of him and his doctrines is from Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VIII. 238:

”Peter the Lombard was born near Novara, the native place of
Lanfranc and of Anselm. He was Bishop of Paris in 1159. His
famous Book of the Sentences was intended to be, and became to a
great extent, the Manual of the Schools. Peter knew not, or
disdainfully threw aside, the philosophical cultivation of his
day. He adhered rigidly to all which passed for Scripture, and
was the authorized interpretation of the Scripture, to all which
had become the creed in the traditions, and law in the decretals,
of the Church. He seems to have no apprehension of doubt in his
stern dogmatism; he will not recognize any of the difficulties
suggested by philosophy; he cannot, or will not, perceive the weak
points of his own system. He has the great merit that, opposed as
he was to the prevailing Platonism, throughout the Sentences the
ethical principle predominates; his excellence is perspicuity,
simpilicity, definiteness of moral purpose. His distinctons are
endless, subtile, idle; but he wrote from conflicting authorities
to reconcile writers at war with each other, at war with
themselves. Their quarrels had been wrought to intentional or
unintentional antagonism in the 'Sic et Non'of Abèlard. That
philosopher, whether Pyrrhonist or more than Pyrrhonist, had left
them all in the confusion of strife; he had set Fathers against
Fathers, each Father against himself, the Church against the
Church, tradition against tradition, law against law. The Lombard
announced himself and was accepted as the mediator, the final
arbiter in this endless litigation; he would sternly fix the
positive, proscribe the negative or sceptical view in all these
question. The litigation might still go on, but within the limits
which he had rigidly established; he had determined those ultimate
results against which there was no appeal. The mode of proof
might be interminably contested in the schools; the conclusion was
already irrefragably fixed. On the sacramental system Peter the
Lombard is loftily, severely hierarchical. Yet he is moderate on
the power of the keys; he holds only a declaratory power of
binding the loosing, – of showing how the souls of men were to be
bound and loosed.“

Peter Lombard was born at the beginning of the twelfth century, when the Novarese territory, his birthplace, was a part of Lombardy, and hence his name. He studied at the University of Paris, under Abelard; was afterwards made Professor of Theology in the University, and then Bishop of Paris. He died in 1164.

109 - 109

Solomon, whose Song of Songs breathes such impassioned love.

111 - 111

To know if he were saved or not, a grave question having been raised upon that point by theologians.

115 - 115

Dionysius the Areopagite, who was converted by St. Paul. Acts xvii. 34: ”Howbeit, certain men clave unto him, and believed; among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite.“ A book attributed to him, on the ”Celestial Hierarchy,“ was translated into Latin by Johannes Erigena, and became in the Middle Ages the text-book of angelic love. ”The author of those extaordinary treatises,“ says Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VIII. 189, ”which, from their obscure and doubtful parentage, now perhaps hardly maintain their fame for imaginative richness, for the occasional beauty of their language, and their deep piety, – those treatises which, widely popular in the West, almost created the angel-worship of the popular creed, and were also the parents of Mystic Theology and of the higher Scholasticism, – this Poet-Theologian was a Greek. The writings which bear the venerable name of Dionysius the Areopagite, the proselyte of St. Paul, first appear under a suspicious and suspected form, as authorities cited by the heterodox Severians in a conference at Constantinople. The orthodox stood aghast: how was it that writings of the holy convert of St. Paul had never been heard of before? that Cyril of Alexandria, that Athanasius himself, were ignorant of their existence? But these writings were in themselves of too great power, too captivating, too congenial to the monastic mind, not to find bold defenders. Bearing this venerable name in their front, and leaving behind them, in the East, if at first a doubtful, a growing faith in their authenticity, they appeared in the West as a precious gift from the Byzantine Emperor to the Emperor Louis the Pious. France in that age was not likely to throw cold and jealous doubts on writings which bore the hallowed name of that great Saint, whom she had already boasted to have left his primal Bishopric of Athens to convert her forefathers, whom Paris already held to be her tutelar patron, the rich and powerful Abbey of St. Denys to be her founder. There was living in the West, by happy coincidence, the one man who at that period, by his knowledge of Greek, by the congenial speculativeness of his mind, by the vigor and richness of his imagination, was qualified to translate into Latin the mysterious doctrines of the Areopagite, both as to the angelic world and the subtile theology. John Erigena hastened to make known in the West the 'Celestial Hierarchy,' the treatise 'on the Name of God,' and the brief chapters on the 'Mystic Philisophy,'“

119 - 119

Paul Orosius. He was a Spanish presbyster, born at Tarragona near the close of the fourth century. In his youth he visited St. Augustine in Africa, who in one of his books describes him thus: ”There came to me a young monk, in the catholic peace our brother, in age our son, in honor our fellow-presbyter, Orosius, alert in intellect, ready of speech, eager in study, desiring to be a useful vessel in the house of the Lord for the refutation of false and pernicious doctrines, which have slain the souls of the Spaniards much more unhappily than the sword of the barbarians their bodies.“

On leaving St. Augustine, he went to Palestine to complete his studies under St. Jerome at Bethlehem, and while there arraigned Pelagius for heresy before the Bishop of Jerusalem. The work by which he is chiefly known is his ”Seven Books of Histories“; a world-chronicle from the creation to his own time. Of this work St. Augustine availed himself in writing his ”City of God“; and it had also the honor of being translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred. Dante calls Orosius ”the advocate of the Christian centuries,“ because this work was written to refute the misbelievers who asserted that Christianity had done more harm to the world than good.

125 - 125

Severinus Boethius, the Roman Senator and philosopher in the days of Theodoric the Goth, born in 475, and put to death in 524. His portrait is thus drawn by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Ch. XXXIX.: ”The Senator Boethius is the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman. As a wealthy orphan, he inherited the patrimony and honors of the Anician family, a name ambitiously assumed by the kings and emperors of the age; and the appellation of Manlius asserted his genuine or fabulous descent from a race of consuls and dictators, who had repulsed the Gauls from the Capitol, and sacrificed their sons to the discipline of the Republic. In the youth of Boethius, the studies of Rome were not totally abandoned; a Virgil is now extant, corrected by the hand of a consul; and the professors of grammar, rhetoric, and jurisprudence were maintained in their privileges and pensions by the liberality of the Goths. But the erudition of the Latin language was insufficient to satiate his ardent curiosity; and Boëthius is said to have employed eighteen laborious years in the schools of Athens, which were supported by the zeal, the learning, and the diligence of Proclus and his disciples. The reason and piety of their Roman pupil were fortunately saved from the contagion of mystery and magic, which polluted the groves of the Academy; but he imbibed the spirit, and imitated the method of his dead and living masters, who attempted to reconcile the strong and subtle sense of Aristotle with the devout contemplation and sublime fancy of Plato. After his return to Rome, and his marriage with the daughter of his friend, the patrician Symmachus, Boethius still continued in a palace of ivory and marble to prosecute the same studies. The Church was edified by his profound defence of the orthodox creed against the Arian, the Eutychian, and the Nestorian heresies; and the Catholic unity was explained or exposed in a formal treaties by the indifference of three distinct, though consubstantial persons. For the benefit of his Latin readers, his genius submitted to teach the first elements of the arts and sciences of Greece. The geometry of Euclid, the music of Pythagoras, the arithmetic of Nicomachus, the mechanics of Archimedes, the astronomy of Ptolemy, the theology of Plato, and the logic of Aristotle, with the commentary of Porphyry, were translated and illustrated by the indefatigable pen of the Roman Senator. And he alone was esteemed capable of describing the wonders of art, a sun-dial, a water-clock, or a sphere which represented the motions of the planets. From these abstruse speculations Boethius stooped, or, to speak more truly, he rose to the social duties of public and private life: the indigent were relieved by his liberality; and his eloquence, which flattery might compare to the voice of Demosthenes or Cicero, was uniformly exerted in the cause of innocence and humanity. Such conspicuous merit was felt and rewarded by a discerning prince; the dignity of Boethius was adorned with the titles of Consul and Patrician, and his talents were usefully employed in the important station of Master of the Offices.“

Being suspected of some participation in a plot against Theodoric, he was confined in the tower of Pavia, where he wrote the work which has immortalized his name. Of this Gibbon speaks as follows: ”While Boethius, oppressed with fetters, expected each moment the sentence or the stroke of death, he composed in the tower of Pavia the Consolation of Philosophy; a golden volume not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully, but which claims incomparable merit from the barbarism of the times and the situation of the author. The celestial guide whom he had so long invoked at Rome and Athens now condescended to illumine his dungeon, to revive his courage, and to pour into his wounds her salutary balm. She taught him to compare his long prosperity and his recent distress, and to conceive new hope from the inconstancy of fortune. Reason had informed him of the precarious condition of her gifts; experience had satisfied him of their real value; he had enjoyed them without guilt; he might resign them without a sigh, and calmly disdain the impotent malice of his enemies, who had left him happiness, since they had left him virtue. From the earth Boethius ascended to heaven in search of the SUPREME GOOD; explored the metaphysical labyrinth of chance and destiny, of prescience and free-will, of time and eternity; and generously attempted to reconcile the perfect attributes of the Deity with the apparent disorders of his moral and physical government. Such topics of consolation, so obvious, so vague, or so abstruse, are ineffectual to subdue the feelings of human nature. Yet the sense of misfortune may be diverted by the labor of thought; and the sage who could artfully combine, in the same work, the various riches of philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, must already have possessed the intrepid calmness which he affected to seek. Suspense, the worst of evils, was at length determined by the ministers of death, who executed, and perhaps exceeded, the inhuman mandate of Theodoric. A strong cord was fastened round the head of Boethius, and forcibly tightened, till his eyes almost started from their sockets; and some mercy may be discovered in the milder torture of beating him with clubs till he expired. But his genius survived to diffuse a ray of knowledge over the darkest ages of the Latin world; the writings, of the philospher were translated by the most glorious of the English kings, and the third Emperor of the name of Otho removed to a more honorable tomb the bones of a Catholic saint, who, from his Arian persecutors, had acquired the honors of martyrdom, and the fame of miracles.“

128 - 128

Boethius was buried in the church of San Pietro di Cieldauro in Pavia.

131 - 131

St. Isidore, a learned prelate of Spain, was born in Cartagena, date unknown. In 600 he became Bishop of Seville, and died 636. He was indefatigable in converting the Visigoths from Arianism, wrote many theological and scientific works, and finished the Mosarabic missal and breviary, begun by his brother and predecessor St. Leander.

”The Venerable Bede,“ or Beda, an Anglo-Saxon monk, was born at Wearmouth in 672, and 735 died and was buried in the monastery of Yarrow, where he had been educated and had passed his life. His bones were afterward removed to the Cathedral of Durham, and placed in the same coffin with those of St. Cuthbert. He was the author of more than forty volumes; among which his Ecclesiastical History of England is the most known and valued, and, like the Histories of Orosius, had the honor of being translated by King Alfred from the Latin into Anglo- Saxon. On his death-bed he dictated the close of his translation of the Gospel of John. ”Dearest master,“ said his scribe, ”one chapter still remains, but it is difficult for thee to speak.“ The dying monk replied, ”Take thy pen and write quickly.“ Later the scribe said, ”Only one sentence remains“; and the monk said again, ”Write quickly.“ And writing, the scribe said, ”It is done.“ ”Thou hast said rightly,“ answered Bede, ”it is done“; and died, repeating the Gloria Patri, closing the service of his long life with the closing words of the service of the Church. The following legend of him is from Wright's Biog. Britan. Lit., I. 269: ”The reputation of Bede increased daily, and we find him spoken of by the title of Saint very soon after his death. Boniface in his epistles describes him as the lamp of the Church. Towards the ninth century he received the appellation of The Venerable, which has ever since been attached to his name. As a specimen of the fables by which his biography was gradually obscured, we may cite the legends invented to account for the origin of this latter title. According to one, the Anglo-Saxon scholar was on a visit to Rome, and there saw a gate of iron, on which were inscribed the letters P.P.P.S.S.S.R.R.R.F.F.F., which no one was able to interpret. Whilst Bede was attentively considering the inscription, a Roman who was passing by said to him rudely, 'What seest thou there, English ox?' to which Bed replied, 'I see your confusion'; and he immedately explained the characters thus: Pater Patriae Perditus, Sapientia Secum Sublata, Ruet Regnum Romàe, Ferro Flamma Fame. The Romans were astonished at the acuteness of their English visitor, and decreed that the title of Venerable should be thenceforth given to him. According to another story, Bede, having become blind in his old age, was walking abroad with one of his disciples for a guide, when they arrived at an open place where there was a large heap of stones; and Bede's companion persuaded his master to preach to the people who, as he pretended, were assembled there and waiting in great silence and expectation. Bede delivered a most eloquent and moving discourse, and when he had uttered the concluding phrase, Per omnia soecula soeculorum, to the great admiration of his disciple, the stones, we are told, cried out aloud, 'Amen, Venerabilis Beda!' There is also a third legend on this subject which informs us that, soon after Bede's death, one of his disciples was appointed to compose an epitaph in Latin Leonines, and carve it on his monument, and he began thus,

'Hac sunt in fossa Bedae ossa,' 

intending to introduce the word sancti or presbyteri; but as neither of these words would suit the metre, whilst he was puzzling himself to find one more convenient, he fell asleep. On awaking he prepared to resume his work, when to his great astonishment he found that the line had already been completed on the stone (by an angel, as he supposed), and that it stood thus:

'Hac sunt in fossa Bedae Venerabilis ossa.'“

Richard of St. Victor was a monk in the monastery of that name near Paris, ”and wrote a book on the Trinity,“ says the Ottimo, ”and many other beautiful and sublime works“; praise which seems justified by Dante's words, if not suggested by them. Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VIII. 241, says of him and his brother Hugo: ”Richard de St. Victor was at once more logical and more devout, raising higher at once the unassisted power of man, yet with even more supernatural interference, – less ecclesiastical, more religious. Thus the silent, solemn cloister was, as it were, constantly balancing the noisy and pugnacious school. The system of the St. Victors is the contemplative philosophy of deep-thinking minds in their profound seclusion, not of intellectual gladiators: it is that of men following out the train of their own thoughts, not perpetually crossed by the objections of subtle rival disputants. Its end is not victory, but the inward satisfaction of the soul. It is not so much conscious of ecclesiastical restraint, it is rather self- restrained by its inborn reverence; it has no doubt, therefore no fear; it is bold from the inward consciousness of its orthodoxy.“

135 - 135

As to many other life-weary men, like those mentioned in Purg. XVI. 122: –

”And late they deem it
That God restore them to the better life.“

136 - 136

”This is Master Sigier,“ says the Ottimo ”who wrote and lectured on Logic in Paris.“ Very little more is known of him than this, and that he was supposed to hold some odious, if not heretical opinions. Even his name has perished out of literary history, and survives only in the verse of Dante and the notes of his commentators.

137 - 137

The Rue du Fouarre, or Street of Straw, originally called Rue de l'Ècole, is famous among the old streets of Paris, as having been the cradle of the University. It was in early times a hay and straw market, and hence derives its name. In the old poem of Les Rues de Paris, Barbazan, II. 247, are these lines: –

”Enprès est rue de l'Ècole,
La demeure Dame Nicole;
En celle rue, ce me samble,
Vent-on et fain et fuerre ensamble.“

Others derive the name from the fact, that the students covered the benches of their lecture-rooms with straw, or used it instead of benches; which they would not have done if a straw-market had not been near at hand.

Dante, moved perhaps by some pleasant memory of the past, pays the old scholastic street the tribute of a verse. The elegant Petrarca mentions it frequently in his Latin writings, and always with a sneer. He remembers only ”the disputatious city of Paris, and the noisy Street of Staw“; or ”the plaudits of the Petit Pont and the Rue de Fouarre, the most famous places on earth.“

Rabelais speaks of it as the place where Pantagruel first held disputes with the learned doctors, ”having posted up his nine thousand seven hundred and sixty-four theses in all the carrefours of the city“; and Ruskin, Mod. Painters, III. 85, justifies the mention of it in Paradise as follows: –

”A common idealist would have been rather alarmed at the
thought of introducing the name of a street in Paris – Straw
Street (Rue de Fouarre) – into the midst of a description of the
highest heavens.... What did it matter to Dante, up in heaven
there, whether the mob below thought him vulgar or nor! Sigier
had read in Straw Street; that was the fact, and he had to say
so, and there an end.

“There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate and
real vulgarity of mind or defective education, than the want of
power to understand the universality of the ideal truth; the
absence of sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects,
which have in them so much of divine, that nothing is small to
them, and nothing large; but with equal and unoffended vision
they take in the sum of the world, Straw Street and the seventh
heavens, in the same instant. A certain portion of this divine
spirit is visible even in the lower examples of all the true men;
it is, indeed, perhaps the clearest test of their belonging to
the true and great group, that they are continually touching what
to the multitude appear vulgarities. The higher a man stands,
the more the word 'vulgar' becomes unintelligible to him.”

The following sketch from the note-book of a recent traveller shows the Street of Straw in its present condition: “I went yesterday in search of the Rue du Fouarre. I had been hearing William Guizot's lecture on Montaigne, and from the Collége de France went down the Rue St. Jacques, passing at the back of the old church of St. Severin, whose gargoyles still stretch out their long necks over the street. Turning into the Rue Galande, a few steps brought me to Fouarre. It is a short and narrow street, with a scanty footway on one side, on the other only a gutter. The opening at the farther end is filled by a picturesque vista of the transept gable and great rose-window of Notre Dame, over the river, with the slender central spire. Some of the houses on eiter side of the street were evidently of a compartively modern date; but others were of the oldest, and the sculptured stone wreaths over the doorways, and the remains of artistic iron-work in the balconies, showed them to have been once of some consideration. Some dirty children were playing at the door of a shop where fagots and charbon de terre de Paris were sold. A coachman in glazed hat sat asleep on his box before the shop of a blanchisseuse de fin. A woman in a bookbinder's window was folding the sheets of a French grammar. In an angle of the houses under the high wall of the hospital garden was a cobbler's stall. A stout, red-faced woman, standing before it, seeing me gazing round, asked if Monsieur was seeking anything in special. I said I was only looking at the old street; it must be very old. 'Yes, one of the oldest in Paris.' 'And why is called ”du Fouarre“?' 'O, that is the old French for foin; and hay used to be sold here. Then, there were famous schools here in the old days; Abelard used to lecture here.' I was delighted to find the traditions of the place still surviving, though I cannot say whether she was right about Abelard, whose name may have become merely typical; it is not improbable, however, that he may have made and annihilated many a man of straw, after the fashion of the doctors of dialectics, in the Fouarre. His house was not far off on the Quai Napolèon in the Citè; and that of the Canon Fulbert on the corner of the Rue Basse de Ursins. Passing through to the Pont au Double, I stopped to look at the books on the parapet, and found a voluminous Dictionnaire Historique, but, oddly enough, it contained neither Sigier's name, nor Abelard's. I asked a ruddy-cheeked boy on a doorstep if he went to school. He said he worked in the day-time, and went to an evening school in the Rue du Fouarre, No. 5. That primary night school seems to be the last feeble descendant of the ancient learning. As to straw, I saw none except a kind of rude straw matting placed round the corner of a wine-shop at the entrance of the street; a sign that oysters are sold within, they being brought to Paris in this kind of matting.”

138 - 138

Buti interprets thus: “Lecturing on the Elenchi of Aristotle, to prove some truths he formed certain syllogisms so well and artfully, as to excite envy.” Others interpret the word invidiosi in the Latin sense of odious, – truths that were odious to somebody; which interpretation is supported by the fact that Sigier was summoned before the primate of the Dominicans on suspicion of heresy, but not convicted.

147 - 147

Milton, At a Solemn Musick:–

“Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy;
Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse;
Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ
Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce;
And to our high-raised fantasy present
That undisturbed song of pure concent,
Aye sung before the sapphire-colored throne
To Him that sits thereon,
With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee;
Where the bright Seraphim, in burning row,
Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow;
And the cherubic host, in thousand quires,
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,
With those just spirits that wear victorious palms
Hymns devout and holy psalms
Singing everlastingly:
That we on earth, with undiscording voice,
May rightly answer that melodious noise;
As once we did, till disproportioned sin
Jarred against Nature's chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.
O, may we soon again renew that song,
And keep in tune with Heaven, till God erelong
To his celestial concert us unite,
To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light!”