On the narrative level the last seems most likely, but the other meanings could function along with it.

 

95-96. warp ... shuttle: The vertical strings of a loom are the warp. Across them the shuttle draws the woof. Not to draw the shuttle entirely through is to leave the weaving unfinished, hence her vow unfulfilled.

 

98. a lady: Saint Clara of Assisi (1194-1253). Born Chiara Sciffi, she became a disciple of St. Francis and, under his influence, founded in 1212 an order of nuns. hereabove: Higher in Heaven. Probably in the Empyrean, but Dante does not mention her again.

 

101. that sweet Bridegroom: Christ. He is so-called several times in the New Testament.

 

102. all vows ... that add to His delight: Only those vows that conform to His love are acceptable. A vow to perform a trivial or an evil action would have no standing.

 

109. This other splendor: The Empress Constance (1154- 1198). As the last of the line of Norman kings who took southern Italy in the eleventh century, she was Empress of the Two Sicilies (Sicily and Naples). She married the Emperor Henry VI in 1185 and became the mother of Frederick II. Dante follows a legend, for which there was no basis in fact, that she had become a nun and was forced to leave her convent to marry Henry.

 

109. lets herself appear: Dante says, “who shows herself to you.” Clearly, the souls in Paradise can make themselves visible or invisible at will (i.e., Heaven reveals itself of its own love). At the end of the conversation the whole company withdraws from sight.

v 119. THE THREE BLASTS OF SWABIA. These are the three great princes whose origins were in Swabia (in Germany). Frederick Barbarossa was the first. His son, Henry VI, was the second. To Henry, Constance bore the third, Frederick II.

CANTO IV

THE FIRST SPHERE: THE MOON

Beatrice Discourses:
The True Seat of the Blessed
Plato’s Error
Free Will
Recompense for Broken Vows

PICCARDA HAS TOLD DANTE that she inhabits the sphere of the inconstant Moon because she broke her vows against her will. Dante is torn by doubts that could lead to heresy. Was Plato right in saying souls come from their various stars preformed, and then return to them? If so, what of FREE WILL? And if Heaven is Justice, how have these souls sinned in being forced against their wills? And if Heaven is truth, what of the contradiction between Piccarda’s statements and Beatrice’s?

Beatrice resolves all of Dante’s doubts. When she has finished Dante asks if men may offer OTHER RECOMPENSE FOR BROKEN VOWS.

 

A man given free choice would starve to death
between two equal equidistant foods,
unable to get either to his teeth.

 

So would a lamb, in counterbalanced fear,
tremble between two she-wolves and stand frozen.
So would a hound stand still between two deer.

 

If I stood mute, then, tugged to either side,
I neither blame myself, nor take my doubt-it
being necessary-as cause for pride.

 

I did not speak, but on my face, at once,
were written all my questions and my yearnings,
far more distinctly than I could pronounce.

 

And Beatrice did as Daniel once had done
when he raised Nebuchadnezzar from the wrath
that made him act unjustly in Babylon.

 

“I see full well how equal wish and doubt
tear you two ways,” she said, “so that your zeal
tangles upon itself and cannot breathe out.

 

You reason: ‘If the will that vowed stays true,
how can another’s violence take away
from the full measure of bliss that is my due?’

 

And I see a second doubt perplex that thought
because the souls you see seem to return
to the stars from which they came, as Plato taught.

 

These are the questions that bear down your will
with equal force. Therefore, I shall treat first
the one whose venom has more power to kill.

 

Choose the most God-like of the Seraphim-take
Moses, or Samuel, or take either John,
or even Mary-not one is nearer Him,

 

nor holds his seat atop the blessed spheres
in any heaven apart from those you saw;
nor has his being more or fewer years.

 

All add their beauty to the Highest Wheel,
share the sweet life, and vary in it only
by how much of the Eternal Breath they feel.

 

They showed themselves here not because this post
has been assigned them, but to symbolize
that they stand lowest in the Heavenly host.

 

So must one speak to mortal imperfection,
which only from the sensible apprehends
whatever it then makes fit for intellection.

 

Scripture in like manner condescends,
describing God as having hands and feet
as signs to men of what more it portends.

 

So Holy Church shows you in mortal guise
the images of Gabriel and of Michael,
and of the other who gave back Tobit’s eyes.

 

For if Timaeus—as seems rather clear—
spoke literally, what he says about souls
is nothing like the truth shown to us here.

 

He says the soul finds its own star again,
from which, as he imagines, nature chose it
to give form to the flesh and live with men.

 

But it may be the words he uses hide
a second meaning, which, if understood,
reveals a principle no man may deride.

 

If he means that the blame or honor due
the influence of each sphere returns to it,
his arrow does hit something partly true.

 

This principle, misunderstood, once drove
almost the whole world to attach to planets
such names as Mars and Mercury and Jove.

 

The other doubt that agitates your mind
is not as venemous, for not all its malice
could drive you from my side to wander blind.

 

For mortal men to argue that they see
injustice in our justice is in itself
a proof of faith, not poisonous heresy.

 

But since the truth of this lies well within
the reach of your own powers, I shall explain it,
just as you wish.—If violence, to begin,

 

occurs when those who suffer its abuse
contribute nothing to what forces them,
then these souls have no claim to that excuse.

 

For the will, if it will not, cannot be spent,
but does as nature does within a flame
a thousand or ten thousand winds have bent.

 

If it yields of itself, even in the least,
then it assists the violence—as did these
who could have gone back to their holy feast.

 

If their whole will had joined in their desire-as
whole will upheld Lawrence on the grill,
and Mucius with his hand thrust in the fire,

 

just so, it would have forced them to return
to their true way the instant they were free.
But such pure will is too rare, we must learn!

 

If you have gleaned them diligently, then
these words forever destroy the argument
that would have plagued your mind time and again.

 

But now another pass opens before you,
so strait and tortuous that without my help
you would tire along the way and not win through.

 

I made you understand beyond all doubt
that these souls cannot lie, for they exist
in the First Truth and cannot wander out.

 

Later you heard Piccarda say that she
who stood beside her kept her love of the veil;
and it seems that what she said contradicts me.

 

Time and again, my brother, men have run
from danger by a path they would not choose,
and on it done what ought not to be done.

 

So, bending to his father’s prayer, did he
who took his mother’s life.