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One meant to plunder, one to politic;
one labored, tangled in delights of flesh,
and one was fully bent on indolence;
while I, delivered from our servitude
to all these things, was in the height of heaven
with Beatrice, so gloriously welcomed.
After each of those spiritsa had returned
to that place in the ring where it had been,
it halted, like a candle in its stand.
And from within the splendor that had spoken
to me before, I heard him,b as he smiled—
become more radiant, more pure—begin:
"Even as I grow bright within Its rays,
so, as I gaze at the Eternal Light,
I can perceive your thoughts and see their cause.
You are in doubt; you want an explanation
in language that is open and expanded,
so clear that it contents your understanding
of two points: where I said, 'They fatten well,'
and where I said, 'No other ever rose'c—
and here one has to make a clear distinction.
The Providence that rules the world with wisdom
so fathomless that creatures' intellects
are vanquished and can never probe its depth,
so that the Bride of Him who, with loud cries,d
had wed her with His blessed blood, might meet
her Love with more fidelity and more
- A reference to the spirits of the great wisdom figures who surround Dante and Beatrice introduced in the preceding Canto.
- The spirit of Saint Thomas Aquinas again steps forward to address Dante.
- This is a reference to two enigmatic statements made by Thomas in Canto X which obviously had puzzled Dante. He had referred to Dominic's flock as one where the sheep "may fatten if they do not stray." And when he introduced the members of the circle of the wise, he said "there never arose a second with such a vision" as Solomon. He attempts to explain the first of these remarks in this Canto. The second will be the topic of Canto XIII.
- Christ cried aloud on the cross (Mt 27:46), at the moment in which he died, thus acquiring his spouse, the Church, with his own blood (Eph 5: 25-27; Rv 21: 2-3).