All his intelligent creatures: Angels and men.

 

43. this sacrificial act: It need not, of course, be restricted to the vows taken for religious orders. One might, for example, vow to fast, or to go on a pilgrimage, or to give some or all of his goods to the poor, or to live in a specified way.

 

49-57. Thus it was mandatory: The law of the Jews absolutely required them to offer sacrifices to the Lord (the substance of the covenant) but allowed them some latitude in what might be sacrificed (the manner). The manner of the vow may be changed if its substance is kept, but the change must not be arbitrary (for man, having given away his will, may not choose at his own pleasure), and no man should make such a change without having submitted his case to church authority (whereby the gold and silver keys of papal authority are turned for him).

 

58-60. Sense of this tercet: Let no man think it worthy (even with church authority) to change the substance of his vow to a lesser thing. Rather, the new substance should be greater than the former at least as six is to four. It is always well to look for a special significance in Dante’s use of numbers, but I know of none here. He seems to be using six-to-four simply as a reasonable ratio of increase.

 

61-62. things whose weight and worth tip every scale: A vow of chastity would involve such a thing, virginity being irreplaceable. A vow of a lifetime of service would, similarly, involve what is irreplaceable. By contrast, a man who vowed to make a gift of money to charity every year of his life, and who then loses all his money, might satisfy his vow by substituting labor, or even, if he grows infirm, prayer. Were he, on the other hand, to steal in order to keep his money vow, that would be an evil thing.

 

66. Jephthah: King of Israel. He fought the Ammonites and vowed that if he were victorious he would offer up to God the first thing he saw coming out of the door of his house. The first thing he saw was his daughter and he sacrificed her (Judges, XI).

 

67. have cried, ‘I had no right to speak!’ No right to speak such a vow. In so crying he would have renounced the vow, and better so, says Dante, than to do worse in the act of keeping it.

 

69-70. the great Greek whose Iphigenia: Agamemnon. Iphigenia was his daughter. Dante follows the legend in which Agamemnon vowed before the birth of Iphigenia that he would sacrifice to Artemis the loveliest creature the year brought forth. Rather than sacrifice Iphigenia, he did not keep his vow. Years later, however, when the Greek ships were becalmed at Aulis, the other Greek leaders, especially Menelaus, blamed their distress on the unkept vow and Agamemnon was finally persuaded to send for Iphigenia and to sacrifice her.

 

79. cunning greed: The greed of those who offer dispensations and other holy offices for money. To Dante such practices were damnable simony.

 

80. lest the Jew among you: The Jew could then point his finger in derision because his law was incorruptible in the matter of sacrifices.

 

86-87. To avoid a volume of scholarly disputation, let these lines be taken to mean that Beatrice turned to both the Sun (it was at the equator) and the Empyrean (thus toward the “True Light” in both senses) and that she and Dante ascended in the same way as before. In an instant, then, they soar to Mercury, their arrival signified by the increase in Beatrice’s radiance.

 

94. glowed with such a joyous essence: Both the joy and the light are greater because she is now nearer God and has more of His essence breathed into her.

 

97-99. the star: Mercury.