








































© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2009, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW

[Expo. 3.1 (2009) 41–56] Expositions (print) ISSN 1747-5368  
doi:10.1558/expo.v3i1.41 Expositions (online) ISSN 1747-5376 

Santo, santo, santo: Dante’s Union of Prophet and  
Theophany in Paradiso 26

StEPhEN LIttLE

University of Notre Dame 
stephen.m.a.little@gmail.com

Abstract

In Paradiso 26, St. John tells the blinded Dante that Beatrice’s gaze has 
the power to restore his sight. Paradoxically, Beatrice’s gaze does not directly 
heal the poet; rather, Dante sees anew when the blessed souls sing, Santo, 
santo, santo! These words and other clues in the canto evoke the biblical 
theophanies of Isaiah, Paul, and John. Dante’s direct vision of God does not 
come for another seven cantos; why then does he allude to several theopha-
nies at the significant moment when he regains his vision? Focusing on one 
source for the Santo verse—the Sanctus in the Mass—I propose that Dante 
does depict a theophany. He has a revelation of God—as the Mystical Body 
of Christ—and of himself as a member of it. Dante is united to his own 
theophany.

Keywords: Dante; Divine Comedy; Theophany

Sì com’ io tacqui, un dolcissimo canto
risonò per lo cielo, e la mia donna
dicea con li altri: “Santo, santo, santo!” 

As soon as I was silent, the sweetest song 
resounded through that heaven, and my lady  
chanted with the others: ‘holy, holy, holy!’ 

(Dante Paradiso, 26.67–69)1

This tercet marks the midpoint of Paradiso XXVI in Dante’s Comedy. 
Dante-Pilgrim has arrived on the threshold of the Primo Mobile, the 
nexus between the created world and the Empyrean. he has been blind 
since the end of canto XXV, when he tried to see St. John’s body with-

mailto:stephen.m.a.little@gmail.com


42 Santo, santo, santo: Dante’s Union of Prophet and Theophany in Paradiso 26

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in the latter’s covering of light. During the first half of canto XXVI, 
John questions him regarding Charity. At the end of his interrogation,  
Dante-Pilgrim hears Beatrice and the other souls present singing, 
“holy, holy, holy!” [Santo, santo, santo!]. According to the general con-
sensus among Dante scholars, these words allude to the biblical and 
liturgical phrase, Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, an incipit that also occurs in 
the Biblical books of Isaiah and the Apocalypse; in each of the latter, 
the Sanctus marks a theophany. By invoking the theophanies of the 
biblical prophets, Dante seems to suggest that he, too, has a prophetic 
vision at this point. however, the only figures around him are human 
souls, though of course God’s presence is evident to the pilgrim; where, 
if anywhere, is Dante’s theophany?

At stake in this question is how we understand Dante’s self-pres-
entation of his prophetic vocation. For he appears to invoke several 
theophanies of other prophets at this point. If therefore Dante-Poet’s 
theophany differs from theirs, he is making an important point about 
his own nature as prophet; but if he alludes to their theophanies while 
leaving such a vision out at this point, he could be making a different 
point entirely.

As we have said, the healing follows immediately after Dante’s Sanc-
tus, a text with two biblical precedents, both of which mark theopha-
nies. The first of these appears in the Old testament, at the theophany 
of Isaiah. Just before Isaiah receives his prophetic commission, he sees 
two seraphim attending God in his temple, singing:

Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus, Deus exercituum; plena est omnis 
terra gloria ejus.
holy, holy, holy Lord, God of armies; full is all the earth with your 
glory. (Isa. 6:3)2

At this moment, the protagonist Isaiah exclaims:
Væ mihi, quia tacui, quia vir pollutus labiis ego sum
Woe is me, because I have held my peace; because I am a man of  
unclean lips (Isa. 6:5)

The words “for I have been silent” [quia tacui], which the Douey-
Reims translates as “for I have held my peace,” are evoked in Dante’s 
phrase “As soon as I was silent” [Sì com’ io tacqui] which thus both 



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echoes and contrasts with Isaiah. Whereas Isaiah exclaims “for I have 
been silent” just after hearing the Sanctus, Dante-Poet writes “As soon 
as I was silent” just before the pilgrim hears the hymn. Isaiah breaks his 
silence and professes unclean lips, or speech, while Dante-Poet ends 
his speech and is applauded, by means of the Sanctus. Isaiah’s speech 
is only beginning; Dante’s is drawing to an end, and his silence calls  
attention at this moment to the fact that he has not been silent—he has 
spoken out. he has spoken prophetically.

Dante does not situate only himself in the theophanic scene from 
Isaiah; he does the same to Beatrice, drawing on an image in Isaiah’s 
account. After the latter confesses his silence and incapacity for pure 
speech, one of the seraphim approaches him:

Et volavit ad me unus de seraphim, et in manu ejus calculus, quem 
forcipe tulerat de altari, et tetigit os meum, et dixit:
Ecce tetigit hoc labia tua, et auferetur iniquitas tua, et peccatum tuum 
mundabitur.

And one of the seraphims flew to me, and in his hand was a live coal, 
which he had taken with the tongs off the altar. And he touched my 
mouth, and said: Behold this hath touched thy lips, and thy iniquities 
shall be taken away, and thy sin shall be cleansed. (Isa. 6:6-7)

The seraph purifies Isaiah’s lips with the sacred coal from the altar of 
the Lord. In Paradiso XXVI, Beatrice serves a similar function. She had 
been sent to Dante from heaven (back in the Purgatorio), and now, as 
St. John says, she has the power to heal Dante’s sight [la virtù ch’ebbe 
la man d’Anania]. And like the seraph healing Isaiah, she heals Dante-
Pilgrim at the singing the Sanctus. Dante not only sets himself up as 
revelatory prophet in this scene, he also positions Beatrice in the role of 
angel, literally “one who is sent,” on the prophet’s behalf.

In Isaiah’s scene, there are actually two angels; it would be significant, 
therefore, if we were to find two angel-figures also in Dante’s account. 
Such seems to be the case if we consider the other biblical source for 
the Sanctus, the New testament book of the Apocalypse, in which 
four angelic beings, called “living creatures” [animalia], sing before the 
throne of God in heaven. The author of the Apocalypse writes:

et ecce sedes posita erat in cælo, et supra sedem sedens. … Et in conspectu 



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sedis tamquam mare vitreum simile crystallo: et in medio sedis, et in cir-
cuitu sedis quatuor animalia plena oculis ante et retro. Et animal primum 
simile leoni, et secundum animal simile vitulo, et tertium animal habens 
faciem quasi hominis, et quartum animal simile aquilæ volanti. Et quat-
uor animalia, singula eorum habebant alas senas: et in circuitu, et intus 
plena sunt oculis: et requiem non habebant die ac nocte, dicentia: Sanctus, 
Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus Deus omnipotens, qui erat, et qui est, et qui 
venturus est.

Behold, there was a throne set in heaven, and upon the throne one 
sitting. … And in the sight of the throne was, as it were, a sea of glass 
like to crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the 
throne, were four living creatures, full of eyes before and behind. And 
the first living creature was like a lion: and the second living creature 
like a calf: and the third living creature, having the face, as it were, of 
a man: and the fourth living creature was like an eagle flying. And the 
four living creatures had each of them six wings: and round about and 
within they are full of eyes. And they rested not day and night, saying: 
holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who 
is to come. (Rev. 4:2, 4:6-8)

In the Comedy, Beatrice, John, and “the others” [li altri] take over the 
role of the “living creatures” as singers of the Sanctus. This is particu-
larly significant in the case of John: by shifting him from the role of 
author/protagonist to that of singer of the Sanctus, Dante opens up the 
role of Apocalyptic protagonist—and theophanic prophet—for him-
self. Nor is this all; after John’s final question to the pilgrim, Dante-
Poet records:

Non fu latente la santa intenzione 
de l’aguglia di Cristo, anzi m’accorsi 
dove volea menar mia professione.

The holy purpose of Christ’s Eagle was not hidden.  
Indeed, I readily perceived the road  
on which he set my declaration on its way. (26.52–54)

Dante terms John “the Eagle of Christ” [l’aguglia di Cristo], drawing 
attention to John’s link to the eagle in sacred art. The four “living crea-
tures” entered Christian art early on as symbols for the four evangelists: 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Initially, which creature was associ-



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ated with which evangelist was somewhat variable; by Dante’s time, 
though, the association of each creature with one of the four evange-
lists was well established. John’s connection with the eagle, in particu-
lar, was historically one of the most stable (Jenner 1910, 100–102). As 
John-qua-living creature and eagle joins in the Sanctus, he links Dante’s 
hymn back to its occurrence in Revelations—and Isaiah. he is the 
other primary angelic figure in Dante’s scene.

Lest it appear that the theophanic nature of this scene is tenuously 
based only on Dante’s use of the Sanctus, let us observe that Dante 
also evokes the theophany of Paul on the road to Damascus. At the 
end of Paradiso XXV, he tried to perceive the body of St. John the 
Evangelist—a body which, John tells him, is but earth back on Earth 
(25.118–124). however, John assures Dante-Pilgrim, at the beginning 
of canto XXVI, that his sight will be restored:

“perché la donna che per questa dia  
regïon ti conduce, ha ne lo sguardo  
la virtù ch’ebbe la man d’Anania.”

“for the lady who guides you through  
this holy place possesses in her glance 
the power the hand of Ananias had.” (26.10–12)

“The hand of Ananias” [la man d’Anania] recalls the story of the conver-
sion of St. Paul in Acts 15:1-28. On the road to Damascus, seeking to 
persecute the Church, Paul had a vision of Christ—once again, a the-
ophany—that left him blind. he entered Damascus, where a Christian 
named Ananias laid hands on him and cured him. Paul then joined the 
Church and actively sought to spread his new faith. Beatrice’s glance 
has the same power to cure blindness, and thus to designate Dante as a 
new Paul, a new prophet sent to convert his world. however, it is not 
her gaze alone that marks Dante’s restoration of vision. Rather, the pil-
grim’s healing comes immediately upon hearing Beatrice and the other 
blessed souls cry out, “holy, holy, holy!” Dante-Poet thus combines 
the Sanctus with the moment of healing that signifies Paul’s entry into 
the Church and designation as a speaker of God’s revelation—a proph-
et. In other words, Dante appropriates Paul’s theophany and prophetic 
calling for his own at the same moment that he invokes those of Isaiah 



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and John of Patmos through the Sanctus. Dante appears to indicate 
quite strongly that this moment, marking a step in his development as 
prophet, draws on these three theophanic scenes from the Bible. Again 
we return to the question, where is Dante’s own theophany?

A clue may be found in the stanza immediately preceding the one 
with Dante’s Sanctus. This verse is the climax of Dante’s responses to 
John concerning Charity, the theological virtue of Love. Remember 
that Dante believed John the protagonist of the Apocalypse to be the 
same as the author of the Johannine epistles, in which we read:

Carissimi, diligamus nos invicem: quia caritas ex Deo est. Et omnis qui 
diligit, ex Deo natus est, et cognoscit Deum. Qui non diligit, non novit 
Deum: quoniam Deus caritas est. 

Dearly beloved, let us love one another: for charity is of God. And 
every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. he that loveth 
not knoweth not God: for God is charity. (1 John 4:7-8)

In this verse, God’s essence is defined as love; but it is also something 
in which men can participate. Love is the locus of the union between 
God and Man. It is therefore significant that Dante’s responses to John 
climax with the following declaration:

Le fronde onde s’infronda tutto l’orto  
de l’ortolano etterno, am’ io cotanto  
quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto.

I love the leaves with which the garden  
of the eternal Gardener is in leaf  
in measure of the good he has bestowed on them. (26.64–66)

The theme in these verses is divine Love, both as flowing from God 
and as an act of man. This paradoxical love is the context of Dante’s 
Sanctus and healing.

Let us see, then, if we can glean some insight from these verses. 
While it is obvious that the “eternal Gardener” [l’ortolano etterno] 
is God, Dante scholars still debate the nature of the garden and the 
leaves. Many commentators, as early as Jacopo della Lana and as late 
as Charles Singleton, understand “the garden” [l’orto] to be all of crea-
tion, and “the leaves” [le fronde] to be all creatures. to cite one exam-



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ple, Singleton’s commentary: “Dante is saying that he loves the various 
creatures of God’s creation (the leaves of his garden) that make up the 
world, in proportion to the goodness which their Maker (the eternal 
Gardener) in his predestination has bestowed upon them” (Single-
ton 1970–1975, 26.64–66).3 This interpretation would have Dante 
expressing love for, in part, the old order of creation, that which has 
its origin in the old Adam, not the New Adam. So, too, for the similar 
view that interprets the leaves as all men, not simply those within the 
Church, though not necessarily all creatures.4 While there is in theory 
nothing wrong with loving the older creation—indeed, Dante does 
describe his love for it in line 58 and elsewhere—it seems odd that a 
discourse on divine Love, situated in a context of Dante’s entrance into 
the new creation and becoming a new Adam, should climax with a 
look backwards, as it were, to the world being left behind. 

Another group of commentators, however, interprets the “garden” 
as the Church Militant ( the Christians still alive on Earth), and the 
“leaves” to be those humans who have been, in Umberto Bosco and 
Giovanni Reggio’s words, “touched by grace” [toccati dalla grazia]:

Le fronde onde s’infronda tutto l’orto dell’ortolano eterno, indica il pros-
simo, o, meglio, l’insieme dei cristiani redenti e in grazia di Dio. Le meta-
fore nascono dall’immagine giovannea… : Dio è l’ortolano etterno, l’orto 
la Chiesa militante, già così indicata in Pd XII 72 e 104, le fronde non 
sono tutti gli uomini, ma, come è detto nel v. 66, gli uomini toccati dalla 
grazia.

“The leaves with which the whole garden of the eternal gardener is 
in leaf” indicate one’s neighbor—or better, all Christians who are 
redeemed and in God’s grace. The metaphors arise from the Johan-
nine images… : God is the eternal gardener, the garden is the Church 
Militant (as indicated already in Paradiso XII.72 and 104), the leaves 
are not all men but, as said in verse 66, those men touched by grace. 
(Bosco and Reggio 1979, 26.64–66)5

Similarly, Emilio Pasquini and Antonio Quaglio explain that “[the] 
leaves [are] the souls who live in the garden (the Church Militant) that 
has been redeemed by the gardener, the ‘vine-grower’ of the Gospel 
[God the Father]” (Pasquini and Quaglio 1982).6 This view is defend-
ed by Bosco and Reggio based on the following passages from Paradiso 



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XII:
Domenico fu detto; e io ne parlo 
sì come de l’agricola che Cristo 
elesse a l’orto suo per aiutarlo.

he was called Dominic, and I shall speak of him 
as that laborer chosen by Christ 
to help him dress and keep his garden. (12.70–72)

Di lui [Domenico] si fecer poi diversi rivi 
onde l’orto catolico si riga, 
sì che i suoi arbuscelli stan più vivi.

From him there sprang still other streams 
from which the Catholic garden draws its moisture, 
so that its saplings grow with greater vigor. (12.103–105)

In each of these cases, the garden appears to refer to the Church on 
Earth. In light of John 15, however, one could argue that the Mysti-
cal Body is so intimately united that, insofar as St. Dominic helped a 
part of the Church, he helped the whole. Perhaps this is demanding a 
greater consistency in Dante’s use of “garden” than need be, however. 
In any event, Bosco and Reggio themselves also define the leaves as 
“men touched by grace,” and not all men touched by grace happen to 
be still on Earth; some are in Purgatory, others in heaven. “Garden” 
would then take on a wider sense in canto XXVI, with Dante-Pilgrim 
professing love for the entire Mystical Body of Christ.

This last possibility, that the garden is the Mystical Body of Christ, 
seems more consonant with the subtext of Dante’s allusion, John 15.7 
There the biblical author integrates the themes of charity and the union 
of all Christians in Christ. In his Last Supper discourse, Christ says,

Ego sum vitis vera, et Pater meus agricola est. … Ego sum vitis, vos 
palmites: qui manet in me, et ego in eo, hic fert fructum multum, quia 
sine me nihil potestis facere. … Sicut dilexit me Pater, et ego dilexi vos. 
Manete in dilectione mea.

I am the vine: and my father is the husbandman. … I am the vine: you 
the branches. he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth 
much fruit: for without me you can do nothing. … As the Father hath 



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loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. 
(John 15:1, 15:5, 15:9)

The vine is Christ, the Father is the vine-grower, and the branches are 
Christians. A strict parallel with Dante’s metaphor makes his garden 
equivalent to the vine, Christ; his leaves to the branches, Christians; 
and the Gardener to the vine-grower, God the Father. This would sup-
port the idea that Dante-Pilgrim’s metaphor expresses the unity of all 
Christians in Christ, the unity of the Church that is the latter’s Mysti-
cal Body. Moreover, both metaphors are contextualized in a discussion 
of love. What kind of love is the love in this Gospel passage? Not a love 
for all creatures, but for fellow Christians. In short, it is a command to 
love the other members of the mystical body of Christ. 

There are additional reasons to prefer the garden-as-Mystical Body 
interpretation over the old creation one. Both John’s and Dante’s meta-
phors are contextualized in a discussion of love. In the former case, 
Christ describes not a love for all creatures, but for fellow Christians; 
he commands his followers to love the other members of the Mysti-
cal Body of Christ. Then, too, there is the parallel between Dante’s 
metaphor and the Song of Songs, in which the bride is compared to a 
garden: “My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed, a garden enclosed, 
a fountain sealed up” [Hortus conclusus soror mea, sponsa,/hortus con-
clusus, fons signatus] (Song of Songs, 4.12). In the Middle Ages, the 
bride/garden was interpreted as an image of the Church, the bride of 
Christ—and also his Mystical Body. It is not unthinkable that the Ital-
ian orto recalls the Latin hortus as an image of the Mystical Body.

One might object to the garden-qua-Mystical Body on the grounds 
that one could interpret Christ as the gardener, not the garden.8 Such 
critics point to the passage from the Song of Songs just mentioned and 
to John 20.15. In the gospel passage, Mary Magdalene encounters the 
risen Christ, but mistakes his identity: “She, thinking that it was the 
gardener…” [Illa existimans quia hortulanus esset…]. The similar termi-
nology, ortolano and hortulanus, would suggest that Christ is the gar-
dener of Dante as well as John. Fortunately, the two views of Christ—
as garden and gardener—can be harmonized. For this purpose we can 
turn to St. Augustine’s commentary on John 15:1-3, the passage that 
serves as Dante’s precedent:



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Numquid unum sunt agricola et vitis? Secundum hoc ergo vitis Christus, 
secundum quod ait: Pater maior me est; secundum autem id quod ait: 
Ego et Pater unum sumus, et ipse agricola est. … Denique cum de Patre 
tamquam de agricola dixisset quod infructuosos palmites tollat, fructuosos 
autem purget ut plus afferant fructum, continuo etiam seipsum munda-
torem palmitum ostendens: Iam vos, inquit, mundi estis propter ser-
monem quem locutus sum vobis. Ecce et ipse mundator est palmitum, 
quod est agricolae, non uitis officium, qui etiam palmites operarios suos 
fecit.

Are the vine-grower and the vine one? Christ is the vine according 
to the passage in which he says, “The Father is greater than me”; but 
then he says, “The Father and I are one,” and he is the vine-grower. … 
Finally when he says that the unfruitful branches are removed by the 
Father as by the vine-grower, but the fruitful are pruned that they may 
bear more fruit, immediately he also shows the purifier of the branches 
to be himself: “Now you,” he says,” are clean because of the word 
which I spoke to you.” See, he is the purifier of the branches, which 
is the office of the vine-grower and not the vine, who yet makes the 
branches his workers. (Augustine 1976, 2.4–9, 2.15–20)9

In other words, both the Father and the Son are the vine-grower, 
through their intimate union; and the Son is also the vine. The two 
interpretations of the garden metaphor, both finding support in Scrip-
ture, can thus be brought into harmony. Christ in union with God 
the Father is the “eternal gardener”; Christ in union with his Mystical 
Body is the “garden.” Dante and the rest of the Mystical Body, rooted 
in Christ as the garden, are the “leaves” or “branches” [fronde]—yet 
mystically also co-workers with Christ and the Father.

Thus, Dante’s final answer to St. John becomes an expression of love 
for the Church, the mystical body of Christ. Since the only persons 
visible to him at this point are the saints, the members of the Mystical 
Body of Christ, could these somehow be the focus of his theophany? 
It is noteworthy that Dante replaces the biblical singers of the Sanctus, 
the angels, with the humans in the Mystical Body. Is there a precedent 
for the Mystical Body singing the Sanctus? Yes, within the context of 
the Mass. Until now, Dante scholarship has focused on the Te Deum 
hymn as the primary liturgical source for Dante’s “holy, holy, holy,” as 



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in Kevin Brownlee’s “Why the Angels Sing Italian” (1984); the Sanctus 
of the Mass has never before been used extensively to interpret these 
verses of the Comedy. Yet Dante follows the Mass exactly by putting 
the Sanctus in the mouths of humans instead of angels. In the Biblical 
texts in Isaiah and in the Apocalypse, it is angelic beings who sing the 
Sanctus, never humans; even in the Te Deum, the words “holy, holy, 
holy” are put in the mouths of angels—they are effectively quoted, not 
sung as direct speech on the part of men and women. Only in the Mass 
do we find human beings directly singing the Sanctus. 

In the Mass, therefore, we find the key to Dante’s missing theophany. 
The liturgy of the Mass unites the faithful in the Eucharist, the sac-
ramental Body of Christ, for the very purpose of unifying them in 
the Mystical Body of Christ; thus the Mass is a fitting sub-text for 
Dante’s scene. But the theme of the Mystical Body’s unity also arises 
specifically from the Mass’ Sanctus itself. For, as liturgical scholar Josef 
Jungmann notes in his book The Mass of the Roman Rite, the text of 
the Mass’ Sanctus serves to remind the community of believers of two 
things (1986, 135). The first part of the Sanctus—“holy, holy, holy 
Lord God of hosts. Full are heaven and Earth with your glory.”10—
recalls the theophanies of Isaiah and Revelation, and thus reminds the 
Christian that he or she participates in the liturgy of heaven. But there 
is a second part—“hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes 
in the name of the Lord. hosanna in the highest”—which recalls the 
words with which the crowds greeted Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on 
Palm Sunday. According to Jungmann, this second half reminds the 
Christian that he or she is destined for the heavenly Jerusalem. The 
Sanctus in the Mass thus signifies that all Christians form part of a 
community that exists both on Earth and in heaven—the mystical 
body of Christ.

That is the mode through which God manifests himself in Dante’s 
theophanic moment. Dante uses the Sanctus of the Mass to create a 
theophany both similar to and yet different from those of Isaiah and 
John. As with the two biblical prophets, the Sanctus marks Dante-Pil-
grim’s vision of God. Unlike them, however, his theophany is of God 
revealed in the mystical body of Christ, the unity of all believers with 
and in God. The key consequence is that, as a member of the Church, 



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he is himself united to the mystical body; consequently, and also unlike 
the biblical theophanies, Dante is united to his own vision. he sees the 
divine, and yet in a mystical sense he is also divinized. United to Christ 
and his Church, Dante sees fulfilled in himself the Sanctus’ promise of 
divine unity. he thus becomes a new kind of prophet, capable of per-
fectly communicating the divine reality which he has seen because he is 
united to it. Prophet and theophany, poet and revelation, are one.

Notes

1. All Dante quotes are from the Paradiso. Except where noted, I have used the 
Giorgio Petrocchi text and Robert and Jean hollander’s translation of the Para-
diso, as available online at the Princeton Dante Project (http://etcweb.princeton.
edu/dante/pdp/), and the Latin Vulgate with the Douay-Rheims translation for 
the Bible. See Works Cited for more information. As is usual when citing the 
Comedy, I have used the canto and verse numbers rather than page numbers.

2. My translation. See previous note and Works Cited for information on biblical 
texts used in this article.

3. All references to commentaries are given by the canto and verse of the Paradiso to 
which they refer. All commentaries used in this article are the versions available 
online through the Dartmouth Dante Project (http://dante.dartmouth.edu/). 
Commentaries are listed in the bibliography by commentator.

4. See also the following comments on this passage: Alighieri 1340–1342; Barbi 
and Casini 1921; Benvenuto da Imola 1375-80; Codice cassinese 1350–1375[?]; 
Daniello 1568; Lancia 1333; Mestica 1921–1922 (who includes not only all men 
but all “intelligent creatures”); tozer 1901; Vellutello 1544.

5. My translation. The same position, or a similar one, is taken by Chimenz 1962; 
Gabriele 1525–1541; Giacalone 1968; Porena 1946–1948; Sapegno 1955–1957. 
(tommaseo 1837 takes an equivalent view of the orto and fronde, but interprets 
the ortolano as Christ.)

6. “[Le] fronde [sono] le anime che vivono nell’orto (la Chiesa militante) redento 
dall’ortolano, l’«agricola» evangelico.”

7. Cf. Bosco and Reggio 1979, 26.64–66; Scartazzini 1900, 26.65; Singleton 
1970–1975, 26.64–66.

8. As in the commentaries: Andreoli 1856; Francesco da Buti 1385–1395; tom-

http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/
http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/
mailto:stephen.m.a.little@gmail.com


Stephen Little 53

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2009

maseo 1837; Vellutello 1544.

9. My translation.

10. My translation.

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