• The spirit shows its increase of joy by increase of brightness. As Picarda in Canto III 67:⁠— “First with those other shades she smiled a little; Thereafter answered me so joyously, She seemed to burn in the first fire of love.” And Justinian, in Canto V 133:⁠— “Even as the sun, that doth conceal himself By too much light, when heat has worn away The tempering influence of the vapors dense, By greater rapture thus concealed itself In its own radiance the figure saintly.” ↩
• The spirit who speaks is Charles Martel of Hungary, the friend and benefactor of Dante. He was the eldest son of Charles the Lame (Charles II of Naples) and of Mary of Hungary. He was born in 1272, and in 1291 married the “beautiful Clemence,” daughter of Rudolph of Hapsburg, Emperor of Germany. He died in 1295, at the age of twenty-three, to which he alludes in the words, “The world possessed me Short time below.” ↩
• That part of Provence, embracing Avignon, Aix, Aries, and Marseilles, of which his father was lord, and which he would have inherited had he lived. This is “the great dowry of Provence,” which the daughter of Raymond Berenger brought to Charles of Anjou in marriage, and which is mentioned in Purgatorio XX 61, as taking the sense of shame out of the blood of the Capets. ↩