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Dante's Heavenly Rose: An Analogue or a Borrowing?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Theodore Silverstein
Theodore Silverstein
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

The figure of the rose with which Dante tops the soaring structure of his Paradiso may seem to have stimulated comment enough by now, and the present note, pointing out yet another possible analogue, serve merely to expand the raw bulk of such materials, which, though interesting in themselves, add little essential to our knowledge of the poem. But no Stoffkritik has yet explained entirely happily to the student of the popular otherworld traditions, the origin of this figure in the Divine Comedy or the peculiar fitness of its use there. And the present parallel has the virtue that it is really a parallel, and not confined to the rose alone, whose figure and symbolic significance are common property in the Middle Ages. On the contrary, it describes at the supernal heights of heaven a city which is shaped like a rose, is also the special paradise of the Virgin, and contains traces of another motif — the empty thrones and the waiting crowns and vestments reserved until the Time shall come for the just and the poor in spirit —, which Dante also places for the elect within the limits of this heavenly city. All this, moreover, appears in a work belonging to that body of otherworld lore from which the Divine Comedy, itself the most elaborate literary example of this genre, frequently borrows.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , April 1949 , pp. 149 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1949

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References

1 Apocrypha de B. Maria virgine, in Scriptores aethiopici, ser. 1, tom. VII (Corpus script. christ. orient., Rome, 1909), item iii: Apocalypsis seu visio Mariae virginis, text, pp. 53–80; transl. pp. 45–68. Cf. SirBudge, E. A. Wallis, Legends of our lady Mary the perpetual virgin and her mother Hannâ (London, etc.: the Medici Society, 1922), pp. 245–78Google Scholar.

2 Transl. Chaine, p. 60. I have italicized the details which are particularly important for the present discussion. Cf. Budge, pp. 265–6.

3 See the introduction to Chaine's text, p. 52.

4 Budge, p. xliv, and Alvarez, F., Narrative of the Portuguese embassy to Abyssinia, transl. Stanley, Lord (London, 1881), p. 210Google Scholar.

5 For the Greek see especially Tischendorf, , Apocalypses apocryphae (Leipzig, 1866), pp. 95–112Google Scholar; Vassiliev, A., Anecdota graeco-byzantina, I (Moscow, 1893), 125 ff.Google Scholar; and M. R. James, Apocrypha anecdota I (Texts and studies, ed. J. Armitage Robinson, II. 3 [1893]), pp. 115–26, and Apocr. anec. II (Texts and studies, V. 1 [1897]), p. 141. For the Syriac, A. S. Lewis, Apocrypha syriaca (Studia sinaitica, no. XI [1902]), esp. pp. 64–9; cf. W. Wright, in Journal of sacred literature, n. s., VII (1865), 156–8. For the Arabic, Maximilian Enger, Ioannis apostoli de transitu beatae Mariae virginis liber (Elberfeld, 1854). See also James, M. R., The apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1924), pp. 194 ff.Google Scholar, esp. p. 222, and pp. 563–4.

6 Vetter, Paul, “Die armenische dormitio Mariae” Theologische Quartalschrift, LXXXIV (1902), 321–49Google Scholar; and (for the Latin) Tischendorf, Apoc. apocr., “Transitus Mariae A,” pp. 113–23; “Transitus Mariae B,” pp. 124–36. See also the Syriac text in Wright, W., Contributions to the apocryphal literature of the New Testament (London, 1865), pp. 24 ff.Google Scholar, and the Coptic texts in James, Apocr. N.T., pp. 194–201. For more recently published texts see André Wilmart, Analecta reginensia, Studi e testi, no. LIX (Città del Vaticano, 1933), pp. 325–57, and 357–62, which prints two further Latin versions (C and D); and the Byzantine texts and studies by Jugie, M.: Patrologia orientalis, XVI (1922), 425–589Google Scholar, and XIX (1926), 285–526; “La mort et l'assomption de la Sainte Vierge dans la tradition des cinq premiers siècles,” Echos d'orient, XXV (1926), 5–20Google Scholar, 129–43, 281–307; and “La littérature apocryphe sur la mort et l'assomption de Marie,” Echos d'orient, XXIX (1930), 264–95Google Scholar. Cf. Willard, Rudolph, “On Blickling homily XIII: the Assumption of the Virgin,” Review of English studies, XII (1936), 1 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The testament of Mary,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, IX (1937), 341–64Google Scholar.

7 Apocrypha syriaca, “Introduction,” p. x.

8 In the Long texts in Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and Old Slavonic; see Silverstein, , Visio sancti Pauli (London, 1935), p. 32Google Scholar, and the texts referred to there; and James, Apocr. N.T., pp. 549–50.

9 Silverstein, p. 3 and p. 91, n. 2; and Casey, R. P., “The Apocalypse of Paul,” Journal of Theological Studies, XXXIV (1933), esp. 28 and 24–6Google Scholar.

10 “The departure of my lady Mary,” transl. from Syriac by Wright, Journal of Sacred Lit., n. s., VII, 158. Cf. A. S. Lewis, Apocrypha siriaca, p. 66, where the motif, though abbreviated, clearly appears; and Ioannis apost. de transitu (Arabic), ed. Enger, pp. 93–4.

11 For the early development of the Transitus literature in Africa see James, Apocr. N.T., p. 194, and Budge, “Introduction,” passim, and p. lxxv. Chaine, text, p. 51, and transl., p. 43, thinks that the Ethiopic comes through Arabic from the Greek, but this is a general reference to the supposed origin of this literature as a whole, and is based on the doubtful view of Tischendorf.

12 Silverstein, pp. 92–3, n. 6; and Casey, Journ. Theol. Stud., XXXIV, 4. See also James, Texts and Studies, II. 3, pp. 115–26, and Apocr. N.T., pp. 563–4.

13 Silverstein, pp. 29–30.

14 Ed. R. H. Charles (London, 1900), where the pertinent passages survive in a Western tradition in one of the two extant Latin texts (L2): pp. 109, 117 f., 120, 122, 123 f., 138.

15 Silverstein, pp. 140–1. Cf. “The throne of the Emperor Henry in Dante's Paradise and the medieval conception of Christian kingship,” Harvard Theological Review, XXXII (1939), 115 ffGoogle Scholar.

16 See Harvard Theological Review, XXXII, 116–7, and notes.