Paradiso (110 page)

82.
   The adjective
ferace
(literally, fertile, fecund), a hapax in the poem (as is, more surprisingly, the parallel adjective that precedes it,
ignota
[unknown]), contrasts with the notion of ordinary life, based as it is in acquiring wealth and possessions, not in living one’s faith. Like its unique status among the words of the poem, its unusualness in ordinarily sterile human experience sets it apart.
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84.
   On this verse, see Ulivi (Uliv.1982.1), p. 22, attacking Erich Auerbach (Auer.1944.2) for not understanding how changed she is in Francis’s eyes. But see the line itself (“si la sposa piace”): One can almost hear the suppressed assonantal “spiace” (displeases), the normal reaction of almost everyone who is forced to contemplate the visage of Poverty.
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85–86.
   These lines summarize the result of the family struggle between Pietro Bernardone and his son, once known as Giovanni (Sigmund Freud must have enjoyed this passage): Francis, having rejected his own father, has himself become a father and a teacher; having rejected his own family, he has created a group of apostolic brethren.
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87.
   The word
capestro
refers to the rope used to control horses or oxen, that is, a halter, and was used as a belt by Francis and his first followers as an outward sign both of their inner control and of their humility before God. See its other two occurrences as identifying marks of Franciscan friars,
Inferno
XXVII.92 and
Paradiso
XI.132. And see the note to
Inferno
XVI.106–108 for the word
corda
(cord), also used to designate the cincture of a garment worn by a member of a religious order (of its fourteen appearances in the poem, however, only two others refer to such a use [
Inf.
XXVII.67;
Purg.
VII.114]).
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88–93.
   In 1214, Francis went to Rome and had an audience with Pope Innocent III, who approved the founding of the order (he gave it its “first
seal”). See Tozer’s paraphrase (comm. to these vv.): “On that occasion he was not shamefaced on account of the meanness of his origin or his contemptible appearance, but ‘like a prince declared to Innocent his stern intention’ of founding his Order: It is a little difficult to reconcile the statement about the meanness of his origin with the fact that his father was a well-to-do merchant; but this appears to be the meaning, for St. Bonaventura in his Life of St. Francis says that, when the epithets ‘boorish’ and ‘mercenary’ were applied to him, the Saint was wont to reply, that such reproaches were suitably addressed to Pietro Bernardone’s son (‘Talia enim licet audire filium Petri de Bernardone’ [
Legenda maior
VI.2]).”
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91.
   Pasquini (Pasq.2001.1), p. 241, points out that words in Dante’s narrative at times are at radical odds with their counterparts in the various
vitae
of St. Francis, as here
regalmente
(regally) replaces the adverb
humiliter
(humbly); similarly, in verse 101, the Sultan’s presence is described as being
superba
(prideful) while in the lives of Francis he is presented as offering a respectful welcome; or, in verse 106, Mt. Alvernia is portrayed as a
crudo sasso
(rugged rock) rather than as the
locus amoenus
(pleasant place) of his biographers’ accounts. What these changes commonly reflect is Dante’s desire to make Francis’s story more heroic than did his own biographers, who dwelled on his humility. As opposed to those who would only contrast Francis and Dominic, Dante matches them as “militant heroes” of the Church. See the note to
Paradiso
XII.35.
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92.
   Dante suppresses reference to the narrative that appears not only in all the early lives of Francis, but which has a role in Giotto’s representation of his life in the upper church at Assisi. Pope Innocent III at first was not favorable to Francis’s petition and was planning to deny it. He had a dream, however, in which he saw Francis holding the tottering Church of St. John Lateran on his shoulders, and that won him over.
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94–99.
   In fewer than ten years the order had grown from a relatively tiny band (those who had joined by the time Francis first went to Rome) into some five thousand members in 1223, by the time he goes there to appear before Pope Onorius III and to receive the “second seal” of his mission from him.
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94.
   The
gente poverella
(his followers, sworn to poverty) are to be distinguished from “ordinary”
povera gente
(poor people): Francis and his followers
chose
poverty, not necessarily having been born to it.
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96.
   
There are three basic constructions of the possible meaning of this contested line: Francis’s life (1) is only to be praised for the greater glory of God, (2) were better sung in Heaven than by his (corrupt?) followers down there on earth, (3) were better sung in the Empyrean than (by me [Thomas]?) here in the Sun. Sapegno argues (comm. to this verse) briefly and cogently against the first two hypotheses and makes a convincing case for the third, giving it its first complete statement: “The life of Francis is more worthy of being sung in the Empyrean by choruses of angels and of souls in bliss than it is of being described in pedestrian ways by me alone.” Thus, in this canto based on praise for Francis’s humility, Thomas displays his own as well.
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99.
   The word
archimandrita
, a word formed out of a Greek ecclesiastical term meaning “chief shepherd” (from
arch
+
mandra
[“sheepfold”]), and thus the head of more than one monastic community, a hapax in the poem (but which appears, denoting the apostle Peter, in
Mon
. III.ix.17; it also is present, referring to the pope, in
Epist
. XI.13). This word is not, as some might expect, a Dantean coinage, but may have been found by him in the
Magnae derivationes
of Uguccione da Pisa, as Grandgent (comm. to vv. 97–99) seems to have been the first commentator to suggest.
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100–105.
   Drawn by his hope for martyrdom, in imitation of Christ, Francis, accompanied by twelve of his followers (a number obviously meant to recall Jesus’ twelve disciples) went to Egypt during a crusade. He insisted, at great risk to all of their lives, on trying to convert the Sultan, Malik al-Kamil, and preached before him to no avail. The Mohammedan, showing great restraint (and perhaps some political astuteness), sent Francis and his fellows back to the Christian army. Francis, seeing his plans for martyrdom during crusade foiled by his gracious adversary, returned to Italy.

Dante presents this episode out of sequence, since the Egyptian journey occurred in 1219, four years before his second trip to Rome, presented in vv. 94–99.
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106–108.
   A year after his receiving the second seal from the pope, Francis receives his third and final seal on Mt. Alvernia directly from Christ, the five stigmata that marked his body as they had marked His.
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109–117.
   Francis’s death receives more poetic space than any other element in Thomas’s biography. His soul flies back to its Maker. (This is one
of the few specific notices we have that some of the saved bypass purgation in order to proceed directly to Heaven. See the note to
Paradiso
X.121–129.)

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

Thomas’s narrative has moved first along a vertical axis, beginning in the mountains above Assisi (vv. 43–45) and descending from there; then along a horizontal axis, as Francis moves around Italy and the Near East; and finally ending, once more on a mountain (Alvernia, verse 106), with his soul moving up still higher, to Heaven, while his body’s latent movement is down, back into nothingness, without a containing bier (
bara
, the last word in Thomas’s narrative), in the earth. He was canonized within two years of his death (1228).
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111.
   Veglia (Vegl.2000.1), pp. 94–95, points out that there is a Franciscan sort of magnanimity that is seen by Dante precisely as
pusillo
(meek), as St. Thomas also believed (
ST
II–II, q. 129, a. 3).
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118–123.
   Now our
archimandrita
, Francis (verse 99) is placed in relation to Thomas, a
patrïarca
. It is probably not accidental that Peter, referred to as
archimandrita
in
Monarchia
(see the note to verse 99), is mentioned here, as Dante obviously sees the first
archimandrita
and the second (Francis) as well as the new
patrïarca
(Dominic) as all playing a major role in the shaping of the Church, past and present, when the weakness and corruption in the papacy made the mendicant orders especially necessary in his eyes.

The whole metaphorical passage is developed in nautical terms, in which Peter is the first captain, followed by Francis and Dominic as cocaptains, of the Church. She is portrayed as a merchant ship (surprisingly, perhaps, until one thinks of the commercial metaphors that are present in some of Jesus’ parables), with a precious cargo in its hold, the true believers who (we must assume) will be numbered among the saved.
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124–132.
   And now a switch in metaphor: Dominic’s “sheep” are so hungry for new food that they have become widely scattered; the farther afield they go, the less milk they produce (i.e., the less their lives give evidence of having taken in the lessons of life under the Dominican Rule)
when they finally return. And, if a few keep close to the shepherd, it does not take much cloth to have enough for their cowls. Thus does Thomas follow his praise of Francis with a denunciation of his own Order, as Bonaventure will do for his fellow Franciscans in the next canto (
Par.
XII.112–126).

For a consideration of the identical elements in these obviously paired cantos, see the note to
Paradiso
XII.142–145.
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133–135.
   Heavily rhetorical (three “if” clauses in as many lines), the opening tercet of Thomas’s conclusion draws Dante’s attention back to his words in the previous canto (see the note to verse 139). Note that Thomas does not say, in the final clause, “what I said,” but “what was said,” in a painstakingly modest way of avoiding the use of the first person.
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136–139.
   Thomas reminds Dante that he has been answering the first of his unvoiced “doubts” (see vv. 22–25), caused by Thomas’s phrasing in the last canto (
Par.
X.96).
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137.
   The word “plant” (
pianta
) introduces still another metaphor, that of Dominic’s Order as despoiled plant, the reason for which defoliation Thomas has just made plain (vv. 124–132).
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138.
   A dispute found in the commentaries involves the understanding of the word
corregger
, whether it is a noun (
correggér
), formed from the noun
correggia
, the Dominican equivalent of the Franciscan
capestro
(see the note to verse 87), and meaning “he who wears the Dominican cincture” and thus, here, Thomas (a formulation first proposed by Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 133–139], who, however, believed the noun referred to Dominic, not Thomas). Most today, following the self-styled “first modern commentator,” Pompeo Venturi, who, in the eighteenth century, found an equivalent for the word
corregger
in “reprensione” (rebuke), think it is either a verb or an infinitive used as a verbal noun, meaning, in the first case, “correction” (we have translated it “rebuke”) and, in the second, “guidance.” And see Lombardi (comm. to vv. 138–139) for a return to Buti’s interpretation. For his customary lengthy review (and also a return to Buti), see Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 138–139). However, see the nearly equally lengthy treatment offered by Campi (comm. to vv. 136–139), opting for Venturi’s solution, which is much as our own. Since then, the basic disagreement lies between followers of Buti/Scartazzini and Venturi/Campi, with most who deal with the problem falling in behind Venturi/Campi.
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