(Evangelist) 1, 5). E. RostagnoRostagno, E. gave an account of Toynbee’s article in Bullettino, II, 94; this account only is available to me at the moment. There cannot be the slightest doubt that Toynbee was right, and that his discovery is indispensable for the understanding of DanteDante’s verses. Nevertheless, it does not seem to have penetrated into all of the important commentaries and commented editions. ZingarelliZingarelli, N. (DanteDante, 3a ed., p. 1205) and H. Flanders DunbarFlanders Dunbar, H. (Symbolism, p. 54) developed it further, and it is recorded in the edition CasiniCasini, T.-BarbiBarbi, M.; but the ninth edition of ScartazziniScartazzini, G. A.-VandelliVandelli, G. (1932) still ignores it. The verses in question are the following:
Tu vuo’ saper chi è in questa lumera
che qui appresso me cosi scintilla,
come raggio di sole in acqua mera.
Or sappi che là entro si tranquilla
Raab; e a nostr’ ordine congiunta,
di lei nel sommo grado si sigilla.
Da questo cielo, in cui l’ombra s’appunta
che’l vostro mondo face, pria ch’altr’alma
del triunfo di Cristo fu assunta.
Ben si convenne lei lasciar per palma
in alcun cielo de l’alta vittoria
che s’acquistò con l’una e l’altra palma,
perch’ella favorò la prima gloria
di Josuè in su la Terra Santa
che poco tocca al papa la memoria.
The book of Joshua, especially its first chapters, has been interpreted from the very earliest times of Christianity as a figure of the appearance of Christ; all the details of the passing over the Jordan and of the conquest of Jericho have entered into the framework of this figura, one of the most famous and popular of Christian Antiquity and the Middle AgesMittelalter. We even possess an illuminated manuscript, the Joshua Roll of the Vatican, executed in the sixth century, probably a copy of the earlier original, which unmistakably shows Joshua as a type of Christ. But already to TertullianTertullian this figurative relation was quite familiar: he explains it in the treatise Adv. Marcionem (3, 16), emphasizing the identity of the names Joshua and Jesus (cf. our note 9). IsidorusIsidor v. Sevilla gives a full description of the details, and his passage concerning Rahab,27 quoted by ToynbeeToynbee, P. and RostagnoRostagno, E., was reproduced or paraphrased many times during the Middle Ages, not only by Petrus ComestorPetrus Comestor in his Historia Scholastica, but also by another author familiar to DanteDante, Petrus DamianiPetrus Damiani,28 who plays a prominent part in the heaven of Saturn (Par. 21). All these ancient commentators say, with slight variations, that the house of Rahab alone with all its inhabitants escaped destruction just as the Church will alone be saved; and that she was freed from the ‘fornication of the world’ by the window of confession, in which she bound the scarlet thread, sanguinis Christi signum. Thus, she became figura ecclesiae, and the scarlet thread (just like the posts struck with the blood of the Lamb, Exod. 12) became a symbol of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice. The conception of Jericho as eternal perdition was supported by the parable from LukeLukas (Evangelist) 10, 30 (homo quidam descendebat ab Jerusalem in Jericho, et incidit in latrones …), generally interpreted as a figure of the fall of man. In the same way, the victory gained con l’una e l’altera palma seems to allude to the victory of Joshua won with outstretched hands (Exod. 17 with Jos. 8; cf. Sir. 46, 1–3), as a figure of the victory of Christ, whose hands were outstretched on the cross.
It has been asked many times whether the alta vittoria for which Rahab stands as a sign is that of Joshua or that of Christ, and the commentators have decided for one or the other possibility. But she stands for both: for the victory of Joshua inasmuch as Joshua figures Christ, for that of Christ inasmuch as Christ ‘fulfills’ Joshua; figuram implere is the term used by the Fathers of the ChurchKirchenväter. Of course, it is the figurative sense which gives to the literal sense its importance and only by the former can the prominent position of Rahab be explained. But both terms of a figurative relation are equally true, equally real, equally present: the figurative sense does not destroy the literal, and the literal does not deprive the figurative of its quality of a real historical event. I have tried to explain this in my above quoted article ‘figura’.
Obviously, the last sentence too, che poco tocca al papa la memoria, is to be understood in a twofold and figurative manner. It is not only the Holy Land in its concrete terrestrial sense, terrena Jerusalem, which the Pope has forgotten by fighting against Christians instead of liberating it; he also, for the sake of the maledetto flore, has lost all memory of our city to come, aeterna Jerusalem.
V. Terra et Maria
In the 13th Canto of the Paradiso Thomas AquinasThomas v. Aquin speaks of the two persons who were created immediately by the Trinity, and in whom therefore human nature reached its highest perfection:
Però se ’l caldo amor la chiara vista
de la prima virtù dispone e segna
tutta la perfezion quivi s’acquista
Cosi fu fatta già la terra degna
di tutta l’animal perfezione;
cosi fu fatta la Vergine pregna:
Si ch’io commendo la tua opinione
che l’umana natura mai non fue
ne fia qual fu in quelle due persone. (vv. 79–87)
These two persons are Adam and Christ; this is evident, and has been almost universally acknowledged.29 We have to deal here with Christ the man, l’uom che nacque e visse senza pecca (Inf. 34, 115). It may be interesting to note that DanteDante not only followed the general tradition in his treatment of the theme Adam-Christ, but that he even had models for the special development of the figure terra-Maria. On this matter, there is the following statement in the Allegoriae in Vetus Testamentum, cap. VII (Appendix to Opera Hugonis de Sancto VictoreHugo v. St. Victor, Patr. Lat., CLXXV, 639):
Terra de qua primus homo natus est, significat Virginem, de qua secundus homo natus est: virgo terra, virgo Maria. Sicut de terra divina operatione factus est corpus humanum sic de Virgine divina operatione Verbum creditur incarnatum. Sine macula fuit corpus Adae sumptum de terra (‘di tutta l’animal perfezione’), et immaculatum corpus Christi animatum de Maria. Adam factus est in sexta saeculi die, Christus natus est in sextae aetate, et passus est in sexta hora diei, sexta feria hebdomadae. Adam obdormivit ut de costa eius fieret Eva, Christus sopitus est ut de sanguine eius redimeretur Ecclesia. Adam sponsus et Eva de ipso facta sponsa, Christus sponsus et sponsa ab ipso redempta Ecclesia. Adam debuit praeesse et regere Evam, Christus praeest et regit Ecclesiam. Terra ergo Maria; sexta feria, sexta aetas, vel sexta dies, vel sexta hora. Adam Christus, dormitio Adae, passio Christi; conditio Evae, redemptio Ecclesiae. Ad similitudinem quoque Adae et Evae, Christi et Ecclesiae, est Deus sponsus cuiuslibet fidelis animae.
All these motifs are traditional, though I have not found the figure terra-Maria (‘virgin soil’) anywhere else except in DanteDante and in this passage from the Dubia of Hugo of St VictorHugo v. St. Victor. But it too must belong to the tradition, since the Allegoriae are nothing else than a compendium of traditional typology. More widespread is the figure Eva-Ecclesia, in connexion with the lateral wounds30 and the relation between Adam’s sleep and Christ’s Passion; it was familiar already to TertullianTertullian who writes (De Anima, 43): Si enim Adam de Christo figuram Jabot, somnus Adae mors erat Christi dormituri in mortem, ut de iniuria lateris eius vera mater viventium figuraretur Ecclesia. As for the figure Eva-Maria, it has been, I think, most beautifully presented by Bernard of ClairvauxBernhard v. Clairvaux; the following passage comes from the once famous Sermo de aquaeductu (In nativitate B. Mariae Virginis, § 6, Patr. Lat., CLXXXIII, 441), which we will have to quote again afterwards: Ne dixeris ultra, o Adam: mulier quam dedisti mihi dedit mihi de ligno vetito;