• See Canto XVIII 46:⁠— “What reason seeth here, Myself can tell thee; beyond that await For Beatrice, since ’tis a work of faith.” So also Cowley, in his poem on the “Use of Reason in Divine Matters”:⁠— “Though Reason cannot through Faith’s mysteries see, It sees that there and such they be; Leads to heaven’s door, and there does humbly keep, And there through chinks and keyholes peep; Though it, like Moses, by a sad command Must not come into the Holy Land, Yet thither it infallibly does guide, And from afar ’tis all descried.” ↩
• Nothing unusual ever disturbs the religio loci , the sacredness of the mountain. ↩
• This happens only when the soul, that came from heaven, is received back into heaven; not from any natural causes affecting earth or air. ↩
• The gate of Purgatory, which is also the gate of Heaven. ↩
• Iris, one of the Oceanides, the daughter of Thaumas and Electra; the rainbow. ↩
• The soul in Purgatory feels as great a desire to be punished for a sin, as it had to commit it. ↩