[3] God was known in the primitive language by the sacred and mystical symbol I or J, the Hebrew letter Jod; afterwards by the term El: the first answering to Jehovah, the second to Elohim.
[4] Such change in the name was inevitable, because of the changing customs of thought and speech.
[5] Adam's stay in the Earthly Paradise on the summit of the mount of Purgatory was thus a little more than six hours; the sun changes quadrant with every six hours.
CANTO XXVII.
Denunciation by St. Peter of his degenerate successors.—Dante gazes upon the Earth.—Ascent of Beatrice and Dante to the Crystalline Heaven.—Its nature.—Beatrice rebukes the covetousness of mortals.
“To the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit be glory,” all Paradise began, so that the sweet song was inebriating me. That which I was seeing seemed to me a smile of the Universe; for my inebriation was entering through the hearing and through the sight. O joy! O ineffable gladness! O life entire of love and of peace! O riches secure, without longing![1]
[1] Which leave nothing for desire.
Before my eyes the four torches were standing enkindled, and that which had come first began to make itself more vivid, and in its semblance be came such as Jove would become, if be and Mars were birds, and should interchange feathers.[1] The Providence which here apportions turn and office, had imposed silence on the blessed choir on every side, when I heard, “If I change color, marvel not; for, while I speak, thou shalt see all these change color. He who on earth usurps my place, my place, my place, which is vacant in the presence of the Son of God, has made of my burial-place a sewer of blood and of stench, wherewith the Perverse One who fell from here above, below there is placated.”
[1] The pure white light becoming red.
With that color which, by reason of the opposite sun, paints the cloud at evening and at morning, I then saw the whole Heaven overspread. And like a modest lady who abides sure of herself, and at the fault of another, in bearing of it only, becomes timid, even thus did Beatrice change countenance; and such eclipse I believe there was in heaven when the Supreme Power suffered.