Paradiso -- Canto XII
Saint Bonaventure on Saint Dominic
The instant that the blessed flame had taken
To speak this final word, the sacred millstone
Started its rotation once again;
And it had not yet turned completely when
5 A second circle closed around the first,
Motion matched with motion, song with song:
Song that surpassed in those sweet-sounding pipes
The music of our Muses or our Sirens
Much as a ray surpasses its reflection.
10 Just as, across the thinned-out clouds two rainbows,
Parallel and alike in color, bend
When Juno gives the order to her handmaid —
The outer band formed by the inner one:
The way the words were of the wandering nymph
15 Whom love consumed as sunlight consumes vapors —
And let the people on earth forecast how,
Through the covenant God made with Noah,
Never again shall the world be flooded.
Two garlands of sempiternal roses
20 Revolved around us, and in this manner too
The outer circling answered to the inner.
Now when the dance and all high festival
Of singing and flaming scintillation
Of light with light in gentleness and gladness
25 At the same moment and with one accord
Had ended, like the eyes at pleasure’s prompting
Compelled in unison to close and open,
Out of the heart of one of these new lights
There stirred a voice which made me like the needle
30 In a compass turning to the North Star:
It began, "The love that makes me beautiful
Draws me to speak about the other leader
For whose sake mine is so well spoken of.
"It’s fitting to bring one in with the other
35 That, where they waged war toward one common goal,
Their glory likewise may shine out together.
"Christ’s army, which had cost so dear to arm
Afresh, was marching on behind the standard
With slow and straggling steps and scanty numbers,
40 "When the one Emperor who reigns forever
Provided for his troops who were in peril
Through grace alone, not through their worthiness,
"And, as you heard, to help his Bride he sent
Two champions who by their words and actions
45 Rallied the people who had gone astray.
"In that region where the West Wind rises
Sweetly to open up the leaves in bud
Which Europe sees herself dressed in anew —
"Not too far from the crashing of the waves
50 Behind which, after his long course, the sun
Sometimes conceals himself from everyone,
"There lies the fortunate Calaroga
Beneath the safeguard of the mighty shield
Which bears the lion sovereign and subdued.
55 "Within this town was born the ardent lover
Of Christian faith, the holy athlete,
Kind to his friends and cruel to his foes.
"His mind, as soon as it had been created,
So filled with living virtue that he made,
60 From in the womb, his mother prophesy.
"When he and Faith exchanged their marriage vows
Before the sacred fountain where for dowry
They pledged each other mutual salvation,
"The lady who had acted as his sponsor
65 Saw in a dream the wonder-working fruit
Which was to come from him and from his heirs.
"And that his name might show his real self,
A spirit from here went to christen him
With the possessive of Him whose he would be:
70 "Dominic he was called, and I speak of him
As of the husbandman whom Christ has chosen
To help him in the tilling of his garden.
"Clearly he seemed Christ’s messenger and friend,
For the first love made manifest in him
75 Was after the first counsel that Christ gave.
"Many times his nurse discovered him
Quiet and awake upon the ground,
As if to say, ‘It is for this I came.’
"Oh his father — truly happy Felix!
80 Oh his mother — truly graced Joanna,
If the roots of their names mean what men say.
"Not for the world for whose sake men now toil,
Aping the Ostian and Thaddeus,
But only out of love of the true manna,
85 "In short time he became so great a teacher
That he began to labor round the vineyard
Which turns gray if the dresser shirks his work.
"And of the Seat which once was kindlier
To the devoted poor — not in itself
90 Degraded, but in him who’s seated there —
"He did not ask to keep half of his payments,
Nor for the funds of the first vacancy,
Nor for the tithes belonging to God’s poor,
"But for permission to fight the errant world
95 In defense of the seed from which there sprang
The twenty-four plants that surround you here.
"Then both with doctrine and determination,
In the apostolic office he set out,
Like a torrent gushing from a lofty vein;
100 "And his force struck the stocks of heresy
With the most vehemence in those enclaves
Where the resistance was most obstinate.
"From him there flowed out those divergent streams
With which the Catholic garden is so watered
105 That its small trees have a more vigorous life.
"If such was one wheel of the chariot
In which the Holy Church defends herself
And in the field puts down her civil strife,
"The excellence of the other wheel which Thomas
110 Extolled so courteously before I came
Surely must be evident to you.
"But the track taken by the topmost part
Of that wheel’s rim has now been so abandoned
That there is mold where once there was hard crust.
115 "His household, which marched out straight ahead
With their feet in his footprints, so turns round
That their toes come down where the heel has been.
"And soon there shall be seen what sort of harvest
Bad tillage causes, when the tare complains
120 Of being thrown out from the granary bin.
"I say, however, should one search our volume
Leaf by leaf, he might still find a page
On which he’d read, ‘I am what I was always.’
"But not from Acquasparta or Casale
125 Shall that page come, for one ignores the text,
The other reads tight strictures into it.
"I am the living soul of Bonaventure
From Bagnorea, who in high office
Always put the temporal cares behind.
130 "Here are Illuminato and Augustine,
Who were among the first poor barefoot brothers
Who with the cord made themselves friends of God.
"Hugh of Saint Victor is here with them as well,
And Peter Comestor and Peter of Spain
135 Who down on earth sheds light in his twelve books.
"Nathan the prophet, Anselm, Chrysostom
The metropolitan, and that Donatus
Who stooped to put his hand to the art of grammar.
"Here is Rabanus, and beside me beams
140 Joachim, the abbot of Calabria
Who was endowed with a prophetic spirit.
"The glowing courtesy of Brother Thomas
And his well-advised discourse have moved me
To celebrate so fine a paladin,
145 "And with me it has moved this company."
