Free The Portable Dante by Dante Alighieri

PILGRIM begins to waver; he expresses to Virgil his misgivings about his ability to undertake the journey proposed by Virgil. His predecessors have been Aeneas and Saint Paul, and he feels unworthy to take his place in their company. But Virgil rebukes his cowardice, and relates the chain of events that led him to come to Dante. The VirginMary took pity on the Pilgrim in his despair and instructed Saint Lucia to aid him. The Saint turned to Beatrice because of Dante’s great love for her, and Beatrice in turn went down to Hell, into Limbo, and asked Virgil to guide her friend until that time when she herself would become his guide. The Pilgrim takes heart at Virgil’s explanation and agrees to follow him.
    122. Just as Virgil, the pagan Roman poet, cannot enter the Christian Paradise because he lived before the birth of Christ and lacks knowledge of Christian salvation, so Reason can only guide the Pilgrim to a certain point: In order to enter Paradise, the Pilgrim’s guide must be Christian Grace or Revelation (Theology) in the figure of Beatrice.
    124. Note the pagan terminology of Virgil’s reference to God: It expresses, as best it can, his unenlightened conception of the Supreme Authority.
The day was fading and the darkening air was releasing all the creatures on our earth from their daily tasks, and I, one man alone,
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was making ready to endure the battle of the journey, and of the pity it involved, which my memory, unerring, shall now retrace.
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O Muses! O high genius! Help me now! O memory that wrote down what I saw, here your true excellence shall be revealed!
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Then I began: “O poet come to guide me, tell me if you think my worth sufficient before you trust me to this arduous road.
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You wrote about young Sylvius’s father, who went beyond, with flesh corruptible, with all his senses, to the immortal realm;
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but if the Adversary of all evil was kind to him, considering who he was, and the consequence that was to come from him,
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this cannot seem, to thoughtful men, unfitting, for in the highest heaven he was chosen father of glorious Rome and of her empire,
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and both the city and her lands, in truth, were established as the place of holiness where the successors of great Peter sit.
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And from this journey you celebrate in verse, Aeneas learned those things that were to bring victory for him, and for Rome, the Papal seat;
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then later the Chosen Vessel, Paul, ascended to ring back confirmation of that faith which is the first step on salvation’s road.
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But why am I to go? Who allows me to?
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am not Aeneas, I am not Paul, neither I nor any man would think me worthy;
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and so, if I should undertake the journey, I fear it might turn out an act of folly— you are wise, you see more than my words express. ”
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As one who unwills what he willed, will change his purpose with some new second thought, completely quitting what he first had started,
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so I did, standing there on that dark slope, thinking, ending the beginning of that venture I was so quick to take up at the start.
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“If I have truly understood your words, ” that shade of magnanimity replied, “your soul is burdened with that cowardice
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which often weighs so heavily on man, it turns him from a noble enterprise like a frightened beast that shies at its own shadow.
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To free you from this fear, let me explain the reason I came here, the words I heard that first time I felt pity for your soul:
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I was among those dead who are suspended, when a lady summoned me. She was so blessed and beautiful, I implored her to command me.
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With eyes of light more bright than any star, in low, soft tones she started to address me in her own language, with an angel’s voice:
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    28-30. In his Second Epistle to the Corinthians (12:2-4), the apostle Paul alludes to his mystical elevation to the third heaven and to the arcane messages pronounced there.
’O noble soul, courteous Mantuan, whose fame the world continues to preserve and will preserve