• Narcissus mistook his shadow for a substance; Dante, falling into the opposite error, mistakes these substances for shadows. ↩
• Your destiny; that is, of yourself and the others with you. ↩
• Piccarda was a sister of Forese and Corso Donati, and of Gemma, Dante’s wife. In Purgatorio XXIV 13, Forese says of her:⁠— “My sister, who, twixt beautiful and good, I know not which was more, triumphs rejoicing Already in her crown on high Olympus.” She was a nun of Santa Clara, and was dragged by violence from the cloister by her brother Corso Donati, who married her to Rosselin della Tosa. As she herself says:⁠— “God knows what afterward my life became.” It was such that she did not live long. For this crime the “excellent Baron,” according to the Ottimo , had to do penance in his shirt. ↩
• Milton, Paradise Lost , XII 583:⁠— “Add Love, By name to come called Charity, the soul Of all the rest.” ↩