the Eternal Breath: Recall from Genesis that it was God’s breath that quickened the dust to life. The Eternal Breath, therefore, is the gift of life, and the difference in the beatitude of the blessed must be in the degree to which they are quickened to their Eternal life. The pallor of those moon-souls, as contrasted to the blinding radiance of those who appear higher, may also, perhaps, be taken as a measure of how much of the Eternal Breath is in them.

 

48. the other: Raphael, the third archangel. He cured Tobit of blindness (Tobit, XI, 2-17).

 

54. to give form: (The rest of this line, though implicit in Dante, is my own rhyme-forced addition.) The soul, in Scholastic teaching, is the formative power. (See Purgatorio, XXV, 40-42, note.) The body is simply the matter upon which it works to impress its form.

 

61-63. this principle: That souls come down from the stars (or spheres, or planets) and return to them. almost the whole world: The exception was the Jews. All others imagined multiple gods (Mars, Mercury, and Jove, for example) whose names they attached to the planets. Jove: For Jupiter.

 

64-69. the other doubt: Of the Justice of placing Piccarda and Constance among the Inconstant when they were forced to break their vows against their will. This doubt is not as venemous because it does not lead to heresy. The Council of Constantinople (540 A.D.) had denounced the doctrine of the Timaeus as heretical. But the church had not pronounced infallibly on the matter of Dante’s second doubt. That second doubt, therefore, might lead Dante into error but not into heresy. It could not, therefore, drive him from Beatrice (Revealed Truth) to wander blind outside the church, proof of faith: To doubt a particular manifestation of divine justice implies a belief in its existence.

 

77. as nature does within a flame: The flame, that is to say, rises again.

 

81. their holy feast: Their convents and their vows.

 

83. Lawrence: In 258, during the reign of Valerius, St. Lawrence, then deacon of Rome, was ordered by the Roman Prefect to send him the treasure of the church. Lawrence sent him the poor and the oppressed, declaring that they were the one treasure. He was thereupon martyred. After many other tortures, he was roasted on a grill, but remained steadfast under torture. Jacobus de Voragine (The Golden Legend) reports him as saying to his torturer: “Thou hast roasted the one side, tyrant, now turn the other and eat.”

 

84. Mucius: Mucius Scaevola, a young man of ancient Rome. He vowed to kill Porsenna and let his right hand be consumed by fire when its thrust missed the mark. Note that, as in the Whips and Reins of the Purgatory, Dante presents both a sacred and a classical example.

 

94. I made you understand: See III, 31-33.

 

96. the First Truth: God.

 

97-98.