of the flesh in the last judgement where Christ is to appear as judge of the world; then the hundred19 sing ad vocem tanti senis (who has thus compelled them to arise) the words of the crowd at Christ’s Entrance into Jerusalem (MatthMatthäus (Evangelist). 21, 9, etc.): benedictus qui venis in nomine domini; every mediaeval theologian and most of the laymen knew, and felt immediately, on hearing these words, that the Entrance into Jerusalem figures the appearance or the reappearance of the Saviour when the eternal day begins, and when the earthly Jerusalem becomes definitely the eternal and true one. Concerning the flowers, I begin by quoting some sentences from Bernard’s sermons on the Canticles: he says, explaining 2, 12 (flores apparuerunt in terra nostra, tempus putationis adventi):
Quaeris quando hoc fuit? quando putas, nisi cum refloruit caro Christi in resurrectione? Et hic primus et maximus flos qui apparuit in terra nostra. Nam primitiae dormientium Christus (1 Cor. 15, 20). Ipse, inquam, flos campi et lilium convallium Jesus (Cant. 2, 1), ut putabatur filius Joseph a Nazareth (Luc.Lukas (Evangelist) 3, 23), quod interpretatur flos. Is ergo flos apparuit primus, non solus. Nam et multa corpora sanctorum, qui dormierant, pariter surrexerunt, qui veluti quidam lucidissimi flores simul apparuerunt in terra nostra. … (Pate. Lat., CLXXXIII, 1059–60)
Therefore, flos is caro Christi, and flores,20 plural, are the arisen bodies of the Saints: the figure of reappearance and ressurection is thus continued by the scattering of flowers; and one may even imagine, if one reads Bernard’s quotation ego sum flos campi et lilium convallium, why DanteDante employed the beautiful verse from VergilVergil (Aen. VI, 882), so welcome for the rhyme. It has presumably not much to do, as DanteDante here uses it, with the death of MarcellusMarcellus;21 it is an allusion to the symbolical meaning of the lily, arising from certain passages of Scripture. The speculation about the lily is very rich and multifarious (spiritualis haec tam pulchra varietas, says Bernard on another occasion); I can give only a rough and inadequate indication by saying that it figures on the one hand Christ, on the other the souls of the righteous or their virtues; to Christ refers Cant. 2, 1, ego flos campi et lilium convallium, often combined with Gen. 27, 27, ecce odor filii mei sicut odor agri pleni cui benedixit dominus; to the righteous Cant. 2, 16–17, Dilectus meus mihi, et ego illi, qui pascitur inter lilia, donec aspiret dies et inclinentur umbrae (these words refer to the Last Day), combined with other passages, especially with the liturgical paraphrase of Hosea, 14, 6, Iustus germinabit sicut lilium et florebit in aeternum ante Dominum.22 I give in the note23 some extracts from texts, where the figurative themes ‘arrival of Christ’, ‘resurrection’ and ‘Last Day’ are indicated – without however limiting myself strictly to these themes. For lilia as the souls of the Saints or the righteous one may also quote DanteDante himself, Par. 23, 74–75:
… quivi son li gigli
al cui odor si prese il buon cammino.
With the flower- or lily-figure DanteDante combined another, well known in the tradition: that of the cloud tempering the splendor of the appearing sun, so that a human eye may endure it.24 Bernard writes about this cloud in his first sermon De adventu Domini, § 8 (Patr. Lat., CLXXXIII 39):
Attamen velim nosse, quid sibi voluerit, quod ad nos venit ille, aut quare non magis ivimus nos ad illum. Nostra enim erat necessitas: sed nec est consuetudo divitum ut ad pauperes veniant, nec si praestare voluerint. Ita est, fratres, nos magis ad ilium venire dignum fuit; sed duplex erat impedimentum. Nam et caligabant oculi nostri: ille vero lucem habitat inaccessibilem (1 Tim. 6, 16); et jacentes paralytici in grabato divinam illam non poteramus attingere celsitudinem. Propterea benignissimus Salvator et medicus animarum descendit ab altitudine sua, et claritatem suam infirmis oculis temperavit. Induit se laterna quadam, illo utique glorioso et ab omni labe purissimo corpore quod suscepit. Haec est enim illa levissima plane et praefulgida nubes, supra quam ascensurum eum propheta praedixerat, ut descenderet in Aegyptum (Is. 19, 1).
This motif signifies here, that Christ-Beatrice does not yet appear in her true and unveiled form; this form develops, as one knows, gradually during the ascension to the highest heaven (Par. 30, 16–33).
Whatever, therefore, Beatrice’s general symbolical value may be, here her appearance is a figure of the appearance of Christ25 in the midst of the angels and the resurrected; and the cry veni sponsa is an appeal to arise (si levar; saliva), addressed to the angels and the souls of the righteous. It may be understood in an eschatological way, as the words of Christ (Solomon, quasi dal ciel messo, as a type of the Saviour) at the last judgment (novissimo bando), or in a more mystical sense, as an appeal to inner devotion and contemplation of Christ. In fact, the verse veni sponsa, with the following coronaberis, has always been interpreted as an appeal to the Church or Christianity. To prove this I shall quote some texts beginning again with Gregory (Super Cant. expos., Patr. Lat., LXXIX, 511):
… Potest … intelligi quod ter dicitur veni. Venit enim sponsa sancta ad Christum, dum in hoc mundo vivens, bona quae potest operatur. Venit quando in hora mortis anima, ipsa videlicet sponsa, a carne exuitur. Venit tertio, quando in die iudicii ultimi carnem resumit, et cum Christo thalamum coelestem ingreditur. Ibi quippe omnium laborum suorum praemia consequitur; ibi, iam omnino prostratis et exclusis hostibus, gloriose coronatur … (there follow speculations on the names Amana, Sanir, etc.)
Much more mystical is the conception of Richard of St VictorRichard v. St. Victor (Explic. in Cant. XXV, Patr. Lat., CXCVI, 478):
Libanus mons est, in quo crescunt myrrha et thus. Dicitur autem Libanus candidatio et dealbatio. Vocat ergo Christus sponsam de Libano, cum per mortificationem peccatorum et carnalitatis et devotionem orationis mundatam et candidatam invitat ad supernam remunerationem. Quod autem non solum duplicata voce, sed etiam triplicata hortatur ut veniat, immensitatem desiderii et amoris quem habet ad eam insinuat, et ut trina repetitio immensitatis et firmitatis sit attestatio; funiculus enim triplex difficile rumpitur. Item multiplicata repetitio vocationis et gratulationem indicat, qua liberationi eius de praesenti miseria congaudet. Innuit quoque quanto desiderio hanc celerius fieri optet. Iterum enim atque iterum repetita vocatio accelerantis pariter et gaudentis affectum exprimit. Ideo etiam eam toties vocat, ut iterata vocatione magnitudinem felicitatis ad quam vocatur insinuet; ut etiam trina vocatio Trinitatis indicat fruitionem, quam perceptura est post laborem, quae fruitio est aeterna beatitudo. Et cum eam vocat, etiam ei de quibus remuneranda sit praenuntiat: coronaberis. …
Very similar, sometimes using the same words (funiculus triplex), is the comment of Bernard’s disciple Gilbert of HoilandGilbert v. Hoyland, who continued the Sermons on the Canticles;26 he identifies those coming from Lebanon with those clothed in white robes of the Revelation (ibid., CLXXXIV, 149).
Perhaps our method of demonstration, with its great number and variety of figurative texts, may seem too laborious to the reader, and he may ask if DanteDante really remembered all these complicated interrelations. But it is only to us that the figurative system seems laborious, complicated and sometimes absurd; for the Christians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was daily bread, as every sermon of that period shows. However, already in DanteDante’s time, and even more shortly afterwards, there appear signs of decay, at least in Italy; HumanismHumanismus introduces heterogeneous elements, and the liberty and finesse of the figurative method lose their creative powers. The ancient commentators on the Comedy give many figurative explanations; but most of them are comparatively crude or pedantic, without the sense of nuances and without DanteDante’s large knowledge of the tradition. Again I must insist upon the fact that within the limits of the tradition, within the limits of certain established customs of combination, there was much liberty of interpretation. These limits, however, seem to me to be transgressed, if one understands the cry veni sponsa as an invitation to Beatrice.
IV. Rahab
More than fifty years ago Paget ToynbeeToynbee, P. discovered that Rahab, the harlot in Joshua, chs. 2 and 6, who holds a very distinguished place in the heaven of Venus (Par. 9, 115–126), is to be considered as a type of the Church. He published his discovery, based on passages from IsidorusIsidor v. Sevilla and Petrus ComestorPetrus Comestor, in The Academy of September 12, 1894,