• Stella Maris, Stella Matutina , are likewise titles of the Virgin, who surpasses in brightness all other souls in heaven, as she did here on earth. ↩
• The Angel Gabriel. ↩
• The mystic virtues of the sapphire are thus enumerated by Marbodus in his Lapidarium , King’s Antique Gems , p. 395:⁠— “By nature with superior honors graced, As gem of gems above all others placed; Health to preserve and treachery to disarm, And guard the wearer from intended harm. No envy bends him, and no terror shakes; The captive’s chains its mighty virtue breaks; The gates fly open, fetters fall away, And send their prisoner to the light of day. E’en Heaven is moved by its force divine To list to vows presented at its shrine.” Sapphire is the color in which the old painters arrayed the Virgin, “its hue,” says Mr. King, “being the exact shade of the air or atmosphere in the climate of Rome.” This is Dante’s “Dolce color d’ oriental zaffiro,” in Purgatorio I 13. ↩
• Haggai 2:7:⁠— “The desire of all nations shall come.” ↩
• The Primum Mobile, or Crystalline Heaven, which infolds all the other volumes or rolling orbs of the universe like a mantle. ↩