Paradiso: Canto XI

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, 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.

When each 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.

“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 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, the other, through wisdom, was a splendor of cherubic light 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.

“Between the Tupino and the water which descends from the hill chosen by the blessed Ubaldo, hangs the fertile slope of a high mountain, wherefrom Perugia at Porta Sole feeleth cold and heat, while behind it Nocera and Gualdo weep because of their heavy yoke. 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, for he would speak short, but Orient, 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 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 to her he had himself united; thereafter from day to day he loved her more ardently. She, deprived of her first husband, for one thousand and one hundred years and more, despised and obscure, had stood without wooing till he came; nor had it availed to hear, that he, who caused fear to all the world, found her at the sound of his voice secure with Amyclas; 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; so that the venerable Bernard first bared his feet, 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. Nor did baseness of heart weigh down his brow at being son of Pietro Bernardone, nor at appearing marvellously despised; but royally he opened his bard intention to Innocent, and received from bim the first seal for his Order. 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 was adorned with a second crown by the Eternal Spirit, through Honorius. And when, through thirst for martyrdom, he had preached Christ and the rest who followed him in the proud presence of the Sultan, 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, on the rude rock, between the Tiber and the Arno, he took from Christ the last seal, 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.

“Think now of what sort was he, who was a worthy colleague to keep the bark of Peter on the deep sea to its right aim; and this was our Patriarch: 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, and thou wilt see how the wearer of the thong reasons—'Where well one fattens if one does not stray.'