The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise

by Dante Alighieri

[2] In eternity there is no before or after; time had no existence till the creation, and has relevancy only to created things.

[3] Pure form, pure matter, and form conjoined with matter.

[4] The substances created purely active, to exercise action upon others, were the angels.

[5] The substances purely passive, capable potentially only of submitting to the action of others, are the material things without intelligence.

[6] The substances in which potency and act are united are the creatures endowed with bodies and souls.

[7] The truth here set forth (contrary to Jerome's assertion), the creation of the Angels was contemporaneous with that of the creation of the rest of the Universe of which they were the Intelligences.

[8] Without scope for their action as movers of the spheres.

One would not reach to twenty, in counting, so quickly as a part of the Angels disturbed the subject of your elements.[1] The rest remained and began this art which thou beboldest, with such great delight that they never cease from circling. The origin of the fall was the accursed pride of him whom thou hast seen opprest by all the weights of the world. Those whom thou seest here were modest in grateful recognition of the goodness which had made them ready for intelligence so great; wherefore their vision was exalted with illuminant grace and with their merit, so that they have full and steadfast will. And I wish that thou doubt not, but be certain, that to receive grace is meritorious in proportion as the affection is open to it.

[1] The earth.

“Henceforth, if my words have been harvested, thou canst contemplate sufficiently round about this consistory without other assistance. But because on earth it is taught in your schools that the angelic nature is such that it understands, and remembers, and wills, I will speak further, in order that thou mayest see the truth pure, which there below is mixed, through the equivocation in such like teaching. These substances, from the time that they were glad in the face of God, have not turned their sight from it, from which nothing is concealed. Therefore they have not their vision interrupted by a new object, and therefore do not need because of divided thought to recollect.[1] So that there below men dream when not asleep, believing and not believing to speak truth; but in the one is more fault and more shame.[2] Ye below go not along one path in philosophizing; so much do the love of appearance[3] and the thought of it transport you; and yet this is endured hereabove with less indignation than when the divine Scripture is set aside, or when it is perverted. Men think not there how much blood it costs to sow it in the world, and how much he pleases who humbly keeps close to its side. Every one strives for appearance, and makes his own inventions, and those are discoursed of by the preachers, and the Gospel is silent. One says that the moon turned back at the passion of Christ and interposed herself, so that the light of the sun reached not down; and others that the light hid itself of its own accord, so that this eclipse answered for the Spaniards and for the Indians as well as for the Jews. Florence hath not so many Lapi and Bindi[4] as there are fables such as these shouted the year long from the pulpits, on every side; so that the poor flocks, who have no knowledge, return from the pasture fed with wind; and not seeing the harm does not excuse them. Christ did not say to his first company, 'Go, and preach idle stories to the world,' but he gave to them the true foundation; and that alone sounded in their cheeks, so that in the battle for kindling of the faith they made shield and lance of the Gospel. Now men go forth to preach with jests and with buffooneries, and provided only there is a good laugh the cowl puffs up, and nothing more is required. But such a bird is nesting in the tail of the hood, that if the crowd should see it, they would see the pardon in which they confide; through which such great folly has grown on earth, that, without proof of any testimony, men would flock to every indulgence. On this the pig of St. Antony fattens, and others also, who are far more pigs, paying with money that has no stamp of coinage.