Canto XII

Like torrent which some lofty vein out-presses; And in among the shoots heretical His impetus with greater fury smote, Wherever the resistance was the greatest. Of him were made thereafter divers runnels, Whereby the garden catholic is watered, So that more living its plantations stand. If such the one wheel of the Biga was, In which the Holy Church itself defended And in the field its civic battle won, Truly full manifest should be to thee The excellence of the other, unto whom Thomas so courteous was before my coming. But still the orbit, which the highest part Of its circumference made, is derelict, So that the mould is where was once the crust. His family, that had straight forward moved With feet upon his footprints, are turned round So that they set the point upon the heel. And soon aware they will be of the harvest Of this bad husbandry, when shall the tares Complain the granary is taken from them. Yet say I, he who searcheth leaf by leaf Our volume through, would still some page discover Where he could read, ‘I am as I am wont.’ ’Twill not be from Casal nor Acquasparta, From whence come such unto the written word That one avoids it, and the other narrows. Bonaventura of Bagnoregio’s life Am I, who always in great offices Postponed considerations sinister. Here are Illuminato and Agostino, Who of the first barefooted beggars were That with the cord the friends of God became. Hugh of Saint Victor is among them here, And Peter Mangiador, and Peter of Spain, Who down below in volumes twelve is shining; Nathan the seer, and metropolitan Chrysostom, and Anselmus, and Donatus Who deigned to lay his hand to the first art; Here is Rabanus, and beside me here Shines the Calabrian Abbot Joachim, He with the spirit of prophecy endowed. To celebrate so great a paladin Have moved me the impassioned courtesy And the discreet discourses of Friar Thomas, And with me they have moved this company.”