one may also quote Bernard’s words concerning Sir. 13, 1 (qui tangit picem etc., ibid., CLXXXIII, 1178).
None of the explanations of Cant. 1, 4–5 which I know is altogether suitable for our DanteDante passage; but that could not be otherwise. For DanteDante’s sequence of ideas is his peculiar property; no other, before him, would have said that the corruption of the Church in his time had led to a darkening of heaven comparable to that following the Passion of Christ; or that the sviare of human society was due to the lack of imperial power; these ideas were his own, and so he had to use the motifs figlia, pelle, decolorare as they suited his purpose. Thus, he gave a variant or new combination of the traditional interpretations: human society (sponsa Christi, la bella figlia) loses her colour in the sight of the bridegroom (in the sight of Christ, nel primo aspetto),38 or even, if my conjecture concerning the syntactical structure is correct, nel primo aspetto di quel ch’apporta mane e lascia sera – just as in his sight, ne la presenza del Figliuol di Dio (v. 24), the throne of Peter is vacant. It is not very important whether one understands pellis as coelum, or simply as an image of the Church or Christianity used by the sponsa of the Canticles as a comparison with herself. The interpretation resulting from our observations is not new; many scholars have been convinced that the corruption of the Church or of Christianity was meant. It is, however, not our principal purpose to give new interpretations, but to contribute to the understanding of the poetical and symbolical world in which DanteDante lived.
VII. Lumen meridianum
In the verses of the prayerLobrede to Mary (Par. 33)
Qui sei per noi meridiana face
di caritade; e giuso, intra i mortali
sei di speranza fontana vivace
DanteDante uses the images meridiana face and fontana for the contrast ‘here in heaven’ and ’down on earth’. It is Bernard of Clairvaux whom DanteDante makes speak thus, and the same images are to be found, in the same contrast, in Bernard’s above-quoted sermon de aquaeductu (In Nativ. B. Mariae Virg. Sermo, § 2–4, Patr. Lat., CLXXXIII, 439–440); however they there refer not to Mary, but to Christ.
In Bernard’s sermon Christ is fons indeficiens, fons hortorum, fons vitae, but Mary is the aqueduct which leads the water to us:
… Descendit per aquaeductum vena illa coelestis, non tamen fontis exhibens copiam, sed stillicidia gratiae arentibus cordibus nostris infundens, aliis quidem plus, aliis minus. Plenus equidem aquaeductus, ut accipiant caeteri de plenitudine, sed non plenitudinem ipsam. Advertistis iam, ni fallor, quem velim dicere aquaeductum, qui plenitudinem fontis ipsius de corde Patris excipiens, nobis edidit ilium, si non prout est, saltem prout capere poteramus. Nostis enim cui dictum est: Ave gratia plena. …
The image meridiana face comes from Bernard’s interpretation of Cant. 1, 6, indica mihi quem diligit anima mea, ubi pascas, ubi cubes in meridie. It cannot be clearly gathered from the brief allusions of the sermon de aquaeductu, but is fully explained in the commentary to the quoted verse of the Canticles (Sermones in Cant. XXXIII, Patr. Lat., LXXXIII, 951). That noon which the bride searches for, while she still walks in the flesh, while she only through faith possesses a shadow of the truth, is eternal beatitude: etenim illa meridies tata est dies, et ipse nesciens vesperam; or a little later:
… sane extunc (after Christ’s ascension) elevatus est sol, et sensim demum diffundens suos radios super terram coepit paulatim ubique clarior apparere fervidiorque sentiri. Verum quantumlibet incalescat et invalescat …, non tamen ad meridianum perveniet lumen, nec in illa sui plenitudine videbitur modo, in qua videndus est postea, ab his dumtaxat, quos hac visione ipse dignabitur. O vere meridies, plenitudo fervoris et lucis, solis statio, umbarum exterminatio, desiccatio paludum, fetorum depulsio! O perenne solstitium, quando iam non inclinabitur dies! O lumen meridianum. …
[‘Show me that spot, as Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, still in the flesh, saw God face to face’:] vel etiam quomodo Paulus raptus in paradisum audivit verba ineffabilia, et Dominum suum Jesum Christum vidit oculis suis; ita ego quoque te in lumine tuo et in decore tuo per mentis excessum merear contemplari, pascentem uberius, quiescentem securius. Nam et hic pascis, sed non in saturitate; nec cubare licet, sed stare et vigilare propter timores nocturnos. Heu! nec clara lux, nec plena refectio, nec mansio tuta: et ideo indica mihi ubi pascas, ubi cubes in meridie. …
I should like to express my sincere thanks to my colleague Prof. W. KranzKranz, W. for his many valuable observations, and to Mr. H. S. BoydBoyd, H. S. for his kind help in translating this article into English.
TypologicalTypologie symbolismSymbolismus in medieval literature (1952)
In DanteDante’s third heaven, the heaven of Venus, the soul on whom DanteDante apparently wishes to focus our attention, is introduced to him, by one of her companions, in this manner: ‘Now, I will satisfy the ultimate desire which this star has suggested to you; you wish to know who is hidden in this light which shines about me like a sunbeam in pure water: this soul is Rahab, and her splendor gives to our ranks the seal of supreme beatitude; she was the first to be received into this heaven when Christ liberated the souls from hell; it was most fitting that she should be in one of the heavens as a trophy of the victory that was won with both hands; and this because she contributed to the first conquest made by Joshua in the holy land, a remembrance which means little to the Pope.’ (Par. 9, 109–126). And then, the speaker continues with a violent attack against the avarice of the clergy.
This passage is full of problems. Rahab, in the second and sixth chapters of the book of Joshua, is the harlot who hides in her house the two spies sent by Joshua into the town of Jericho – who saves them by deluding their pursuers, declares to them her faith in the God of Israel, helps them to escape by means of a red cord through the window of her house which is on the townwall, and makes them swear that the Jews would spare her and her parents and all her family in the house. The men asked her to bind to the window, as a sign, the scarlet rope by which she had let them down; and thus only Rahab the harlot and her house were spared when all of Jericho, men and women, were put to death by the victorious Jews entering the town.
Now, why does the splendor of this harlot confer on the third heaven the highest degree of beatitude, why is the explanation of her position able to fulfill the ultimate desire which the star of Venus has suggested to DanteDante, why was Rahab the first to be received in this star when Christ liberated the souls of the old Covenant, what is meant by the victory won with both hands, and what has the avarice of the Pope to do with his forgetting the glory of Joshua in the Holy Land?
All these problems are easily resolved if you consider the figurative or typologicalTypologie interpretation of the book of Joshua which, in a constant tradition, fully developed already in the writings of TertullianTertullian, is explained or alluded to in an infinite number of commentaries, sermons, hymnsHymne, and also in Christian art. The book of Joshua, especially its first chapters, has always been one of the most popular objects of figurative interpretationFiguraldeutung; Joshua was regarded as a figure of Christ (the identity of the names Jesus and Joshua is emphasized as early as TertullianTertullian), and when he leads his people over the Jordan (just like Moses leading his people out of Egypt) he figures Christ leading mankind out of the slavery of sin and perdition into the true Holy Land, the eternal kingdom of God. Concerning Rahab, all ancient commentators consider her as a type of the church; her house alone, with all its inhabitants, escapes perdition, just as the church of the faithful will alone be saved when Christ appears for the last judgment; she found freedom from the fornication of the world by way of the window of confession, to which she bound the scarlet rope, the sign of Christ’s blood, sanguinis Christi signum. Thus she is figurafigura Ecclesiae, and the scarlet rope, like the posts struck with the blood of the Lamb in Exodus, becomes the figure of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice. The conception of Jericho as eternal perdition was supported by the parable from Luke 10, 30 (a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves) generally interpreted as a figure of the fall of Man. In the same manner, the victory gained with one and the