“A youth, moved to devotion by spiritual reading, distributes

all his patrimony among the poor, keeping only enough to buy

a mount and arms, with which he sets off to the holy war.

Whilst on service, he fasts during the day-time and spends

the nights in prayer and vigil as he guards the horses of

his sleeping comrades. One day he cries out in a loud voice:

‘Oh, how I long to be with the large-eyed maiden!’ and to his

companions he explains how in a dream his soul found itself in

a lovely garden watered by a river; on the bank of the river

stood a group of fair maidens in rich attire, who welcomed

him saying, ‘This is the bridegroom of the large-eyed maiden

whom we serve.’ Proceeding on his way, he comes to a second

river, where other maidens again welcome him.[316] A few steps

further, and he meets the heavenly maiden herself enthroned on

a seat of gold within a tabernacle of pearl. When she beholds

her betrothed, she wishes him joy of having come to her, but

warns him that his present coming is not final. ‘The spirit of

life yet breathes within thee, but to-night thou shalt break

thy fast in my company.’”[317]

The following legend was told by Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak in the eighth

century[318]:—

A soldier in the holy war tells of a vision he had when faint

from wounds received on the field of battle. “I seemed to be

led to a mansion built of rubies, wherein I saw a woman whose

beauty enraptured me. She bade me welcome, saying she was not

like my wife on earth, whose behaviour she then related to me.

I laughed and would fain have clasped her in my arms, but she

held me at a distance saying, ‘To-morrow in the evening thou

shalt come to me,’ and I wept because she would not let me draw

nigh to her.” The legend ends by saying that on the morrow that

same soldier died in battle.

A legend, related by Ismail ibn Hayyan, of the ninth century, also tells

of a vision seen by a martyr of holy warfare as he fainted away:—

He finds himself led by a man to the mansion of the heavenly

maiden, through palaces of paradise inhabited by youths whose

beauty is painted in hyperbolic terms. Finally there comes to

greet him the beautiful woman who tells him she is his bride

and who reminds him of the women of this world with such detail

that she appears to be speaking from a record made in a book.

7. The features of resemblance found in this comparison of Dante’s

story of the earthly paradise with Islamic legend may be summarised as

follows: On either hand, this paradise is represented as a garden of

delight, situated on the summit of a high mountain rising on an island

in the ocean; other Islamic legends tell of a garden lying at the gate

of paradise and forming both the antechamber to glory and the last stage

of purgatory, where the souls undergo final purification by being washed

in the waters of two streams; in this garden also the soul is met and

welcomed by the heavenly bride, a figure who in appearance and attitude

bears a striking resemblance to the Beatrice of Dante.

Versions of the _Miraj_ described a similar garden as being watered by

rivers in which the souls are purified before they enter heaven. That

garden was called the Garden of Abraham. Thus, in Islam, there was a

threefold garden beyond the grave—the Garden of Abraham, or Limbo;

the Garden of Eden, or earthly paradise; and the garden of paradise,

lying between purgatory and the theological heaven. Features of all

three gardens appear blended in the Divine Comedy in a form foreign to

Christian legend, as it existed prior to Dante.

The _Risala_ of Abu-l-Ala al-Maarri, the literary imitation of the

_Miraj_ that was quoted in a former chapter, depicted a similar scene. In

a garden lying at the gate of the celestial paradise the traveller, on

the banks of a river, meets a maiden who has been sent by God to welcome

and guide him; she leads him to the presence of the beloved of the

poet Imru-l-Qays, who appears in the wake of a procession of beautiful

maidens.[319]

It would thus seem that there was nothing to prevent the legend of the

ascension from being extended to include the legends quoted in this

chapter, dealing, as they also do, with the after-life. The idea might

indeed prove tempting to so consummate an artist as Dante, who, saturated

with classical and Christian learning, might well know how to weave into

the outline of the story of Mahomet the scenes provided in these legends

and the features available in mythology and ecclesiastical tradition, in

order to paint his picture of the earthly paradise, in which elements

from the Garden of Eden, the Parnassus of the Ancients, and the Paradise

of Islam are blended into one.

VIII

THE CELESTIAL PARADISE OF ISLAM IN THE DIVINE COMEDY

1. As we have now reached a point in our argument when it might appear

that we were treading on dangerous ground, a few words by way of preface

to this chapter may not be amiss. The very suggestion of a comparison

between Dante’s paradise and the paradise of Islam will most likely

occasion surprise even in the minds of people of moderate culture.

Surely, it will be thought, any such comparison can only serve to

show up the utter antagonism between the two conceptions. Indeed, the

spiritualism of Dante’s paradise seems so far removed from the coarse

and sensual materialism of the paradise depicted in the Koran that, if

the question were to be decided on that issue alone, there could be but

one answer. The Koran, however, as has already been pointed out, does

not stand for all Islam, nor does it constitute the main source of its

dogma. The traditions early attributed to Mahomet, the explanations of

the commentators, and the speculations of theologians and mystics, played

at least as great a part as the letter of the Koran in determining the

essential points of the creed of the Moslem paradise. Of outstanding

interest in this connection is the tradition of the ascension of Mahomet.

This legend in its various forms, and particularly in Version C of Cycle

2, showed very clearly that paradise was by no means generally conceived

on the gross and sensual lines described in the Koran; on the contrary,

the picture drawn there was almost exclusively one of light, colour

and music, which are the very elements that Dante used to express his

conception.

The spiritual interpretation of the delights of paradise must have begun

in the first centuries of Islam. The famous traditionist and kinsman

of Mahomet, Ibn Abbas, was of old credited with a saying which is

significant of its early origin: “In paradise there is none of the things

of this world; only their names are there.” The earliest traditionists

even place in the mouth of the very Prophet who had described in such

glowing terms the sensual joys awaiting the blessed, the same sublime

words by which Isaiah and St. Paul had represented the glory of heaven;

for a _hadith_ attributed to Mahomet says, “I have prepared for my holy

servants such things as the eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard, nor

the mind of man imagined.”[320] To this Divine promise the Prophet

added the verse of the Koran (XXXII, 17): “The soul knows not of the

delights awaiting it in reward for its good deeds.” The Moslem books on

eschatology record many similar _hadiths_ attributed to Mahomet, in which

the Beatific Vision is represented as the supreme bliss reserved for the

souls in paradise.[321] It will thus be seen that from the very first

centuries Islam had begun to conceive, apart from the sensual paradise

of the Koran, a spiritual and essentially Christian heaven, in which

beatitude consists in the contemplation of the splendour of the Divine

essence.

2. To trace back each of the many controversies that arose in the

centuries following would be to exceed the limits of our task. In the

end the idealistic conception of paradise emerged triumphant alike over

the exegesis of the Koran and the arguments against the anthropomorphism

of God of the Mutazili and Kharijite heretics.[322] By the time that the

dogma of Islam was given definite shape by its greatest theologians, the

Beatific Vision was considered to be the principal, if not the only prize

of heaven, and the sensual delights extolled in the text of revelation

were discreetly ignored.

The mystics and the philosophers, imbued as they were with Christian

theology and neo-Platonic metaphysics contributed to the gradual

elimination of the sensual conception of paradise by giving its material

delights a mystical or allegorical meaning. And this line of thought was

followed by the two great thinkers of the twelfth century, the theologian

and mystic, Algazel, and the theologian and philosopher, Averrhoes.[323]

Algazel states that, with the exception of the materialists, who denied

the immortality of the soul, all cultured minds in Islam more or less

openly scouted the idea of any sensuality in connection with the delights

of paradise[324]; the philosophers averred that these delights were

purely imaginary; the mystics went further and denied their existence;

and both philosophers and mystics for the joys depicted in the Koran

substituted the sole and sovereign delight of the intellectual vision or

contemplation of the essence of God, the enjoyment of which they made

equivalent to all the physical and ideal pleasures that man is capable

of feeling.[325] This denial, more or less complete in substance, was,

however, attenuated in form, to avoid disappointing the masses, who were

incapable of so lofty a conception. To save appearances, the philosophers

and Sufis affected acceptance of the material descriptions of the Koran

on the grounds that they were symbols, the spiritual meaning of which was

the patrimony of the enlightened. Algazel and Averrhoes, the champions

alike of faith and reason, found means to reconcile the points of view

of both the learned and the vulgar by declaring that heaven, as the

supreme aim and ultimate bliss of all men, would be a state in which

each would attain his particular desire. Those who in this life were

tied down to things material, would in heaven be capable of deriving joy

only from sensual delights, though they could not say of what these were

to consist; whilst those whose conceptions and desires were free from

all material taint, would find delight in the enjoyment of the Beatific

Vision alone.

Thus, Algazel and Averrhoes in their picture of the mediæval beliefs

of Islam provide us with two heavens—the one, material, and the other,

ideal. A few years later, Ibn Arabi of Murcia expressed his views on the

question in the same concise terms.[326]

“There are two heavens—the one, sensible; and the other, ideal.

In the one, both the animal spirits and the rational souls

enjoy bliss; in the other, the rational souls alone. The latter

paradise is the heaven of knowledge and intuition.”

Not content with this formula, he proceeds to explain the psychological

motives that led Divine Providence to lay greater stress upon the

sensible than upon the ideal paradise in the Koran, in contrast to the

teaching of Christian revelation. And Ibn Arabi’s explanation, arguing as

it does the Christian origin of the spiritual conception of paradise in

Islam, is so significant that it is worthy of literal transcription.[327]

“God has depicted paradise in accordance with the different

degrees of man’s understanding. The Messiah defined the

delights of paradise as purely spiritual, when, in concluding

the instructions given to his disciples in his testament, he

said, ‘Should ye do as I have bidden you, ye will sit with me

to-morrow in the Kingdom of Heaven by the side of my Lord and

your Lord and behold around His throne the angels singing His

praise and glorifying His holiness. And there ye will enjoy

all manner of delights and yet will partake not of either food

or drink.’[328] But, if the Messiah was so explicit on this

point and had recourse to none of the allegories found in our

Book, it was simply because his words were spoken to a people

conversant with the Torah and the books of the prophets, whose

mind was thus prepared for his words. Not so with our Prophet

Mahomet. His Divine mission fell among a rude people, who dwelt

in deserts and on mountains; who lacked the discipline of

learning and believed neither in the resurrection nor in the

future life; who were ignorant even of the pleasures of the

princes of this world, let alone those of the kings in heaven!

Accordingly, most of the descriptions of paradise in his book

are based on the body, in order that they might be understood

by the people and serve as an incentive to their minds.”

3. The evidence furnished by the Moslem thinkers, Algazel, Averrhoes

and Ibn Arabi, is fully confirmed by the writings of the two Christian

scholastics who were most versed in Islam—the Spaniards, Raymond Lull and

Raymond Martin. Far from falling into the common error of attributing

to all Moslems the belief in a voluptuous paradise, they repeat almost

literally what those thinkers had affirmed; and Raymond Martin even

quotes passages from Algazel, full of the loftiest metaphysical thought,

in which this prince of Moslem mystics pictures the sublime delights of

the Beatific Vision.[329]

If, therefore, at the very time at which Dante was composing the Divine

Comedy two Christian theologians knew of a Moslem paradise just as

adaptable as Dante’s to the purest and most spiritual Christian doctrine,

the idea of comparing the two conceptions, based as they are on dogmas

that are so much alike, can no longer be considered as out of place.

That a connection between the two artistic conceptions does exist will

appear the less unlikely if it is borne in mind that Dante’s paradise has

no precedent in Christian mediæval literature. Dantists have shown that

in none of the so-called “precursors” of the Divine Comedy could the

poet have found inspiration for his delicate picture. Whereas, to Dante

paradise is pure light, and the life of the blessed, one of ecstatic

contemplation and Divine Love, in the rude conception of most of his

Christian predecessors—who were merely monks or _jongleurs_—life in

heaven is but a grotesque exaggeration of the life of the refectory and

the choir, or of the life at the court of a feudal lord.[330] Thus, the

question of determining the values to be attributed to the conceptions of

paradise current in the Middle Ages may in all fairness be reduced to the

following terms: In the Moslem world two antithetical ideas flourished

almost simultaneously—the coarse and sensual paradise of the Koran,

and the spiritual picture of the philosophers and the mystics. In the

Christian world, the same two ideas existed—the materialistic conception,

equivalent to that of the Koran, which flourished prior to the Divine

Comedy, and the spiritual picture, which was solely the work of the

Florentine poet.[331] Dante himself appears to disdain the conceptions of

his Christian predecessors when, in announcing his ascension to paradise,

he says, “If God ... wills that I may behold his court in a manner quite

outside modern use.”[332]

Once the mind is free from the prejudice, as common as it is ill-founded,

that regards all Islamic conception of paradise as materialistic, it will

the more readily grasp how it came about that Islam, as early as the

eighth century of our era, conceived so spiritual a picture of heaven

as that found in Version C of Cycle 2 of the legend of the _Miraj_.

The many striking features of resemblance borne by that description to

the paradise of Dante were exhaustively dealt with in the first part of

this work, and the wealth of coincidence afforded room for so minute a

comparison that but little is now needed to complete the parallel.

4. To begin with the general scheme of the Paradiso, we know that Dante’s

paradise is formed of the nine astronomical heavens of the Ptolemaic

system. In the first seven heavens it is only by chance that the poet

sees the blessed, who are distributed according to their merits. Their

real residence is in the Empyrean, or immobile sphere, which is thus the

true paradise or theological heaven. There Dante pictures them as seated

on thrones, benches or seats of light in the form of an amphitheatre,

which gives the whole assembly the appearance of an immense rose of

light, in the centre of which God stands revealed to the contemplation

of His Chosen. The Empyrean is the celestial Jerusalem and lies in the

vertical projection of the earthly Jerusalem, whilst beneath the latter

opens the abyss of hell. The most perfect symmetry exists between the

realm of reward and the realm of punishment. Both contain ten mansions

and, just as the depth of each infernal mansion indicates the gravity of

the sin punished therein, so does each degree of merit find its reward in

a correspondingly high mansion in heaven.[333]

Most, if not all, of the architectural features of this plan have already

been shown to exist in one or other of the versions of the legend of the

_Miraj_. Thus, many of those versions represent the astronomical spheres

as being inhabited by saints, prophets, and angels, who were seen to be

allotted to the spheres according to their merit.[334] This conceit,

though shared by Dante and Islam, had however no Biblical foundation;

for neither the Old nor the New Testament definitely mentions the

astronomical heavens as being the dwelling-places of the blessed. The

idea can only have been derived either from the Cabbalists or some of the

apocryphal Christian writers[335]; for the Fathers of the Church and the

early ecclesiastical writers were careful not to attempt any specific

localisation of the theological heaven.[336]

One outstanding feature of Dante’s general scheme of paradise has been

universally admired for its originality. The site of glory, or celestial

Jerusalem, he places directly above the Jerusalem on earth, which

according to the poet occupies the centre of our northern hemisphere.[337]

Exactly the same conception existed in Islam as early as the seventh

century, that is to say, in the time of Mahomet himself. A legend

attributed to the famous traditionist and companion of the Prophet, Kaab

al-Akhbar, a Jewish convert who introduced many rabbinical myths into

Islam, runs: “Paradise is in the seventh heaven, opposite Jerusalem and

the rock (of the Temple); if a stone were dropped from paradise, it would

surely fall upon the rock.”[338] Similar rabbinical sayings, attributed

to the same traditionist, or to another Jewish convert, Wahb ibn

Munabbih, and sometimes to the kinsman of the Prophet, Ibn Abbas, must

have contributed to spread the belief that paradise lay in the vertical

projection of Jerusalem and its Temple. Indeed, geographical treatises of

the tenth century describe Jerusalem as follows[339]:—

“Jerusalem is the navel of the earth. The Gate of Heaven stands

open on its temple. In Jerusalem is the Divine Light and the

Divine Fire. To visit Jerusalem is to enter heaven. God said of

the rock (of the Temple), ‘Thou art My lower throne; from thee

heaven rises unto Me; underneath thee stretches the earth; in

thee lie My heaven and My hell.’ From Jerusalem Jacob saw the

ladder that rose to heaven. Jesus ascended into heaven from

Jerusalem and thither He will descend again. That part of the

earth that is nearest to heaven is Jerusalem.”

It should be remembered that in several versions of the _Miraj_ Mahomet

began his ascension from the same rock of the Temple of Jerusalem, and

this the commentators explain by quoting in a slightly altered form the

legend mentioned above as told by Kaab al-Akhbar: “The Gate of heaven,

named the Mount of the Angels, lies opposite Jerusalem.”[340]

This obsession for symmetry in design is characteristic of Moslem

eschatology, in which the world beyond the grave was conceived on the

lines of this world. All versions of the Mahometan ascension tell of

a temple in heaven called the “House of Habitation,” which is but the

counterpart of the Holy Shrine at Mecca; and, as the Caaba is supposed to

have been built by Abraham, so the latter is represented as residing near

the heavenly temple. Moreover, in some legends this temple of paradise

is supposed to lie in the vertical projection of the Caaba, just as the

Celestial Jerusalem lies directly above the Jerusalem on earth. One of

these legends Ibn Arabi quotes: “Were the House of Habitation to fall to

the earth, it would assuredly fall on the temple of the Caaba.”[341]

Nor does this desire for symmetry, which so imbued the minds of Moslem

traditionists, end there. The realms of pain and of reward, hell and

heaven, correspond in design just as perfectly as they do in Dante’s

design. This may be seen from the general plan that Ibn Arabi traces with

almost mathematical precision.[342]

“The degrees of heaven are as many in number as the degrees of

hell; for each degree in the one has its counterpart in the

other. This is but natural, for man can but comply, or fail to

comply with any one precept. If he complies with it, he gains a

degree of glory commensurate with his merit; but, if he fails

to do so, he suffers condign punishment in hell. Thus, were a

stone to fall from any one degree in paradise, it would of a

surety fall in a straight line on the corresponding degree in

hell.”

5. The actual description of Dante’s abode of glory is contained in

Cantos XXX, XXXI, and XXXII of the Paradiso.[343] As the rays spread

from the centre of Divine Light throughout the Empyrean, they create a

number of luminous circumferences of immense diameter on planes that

lessen in extent as they gradually descend. Each of these circles, like

the tier of an amphitheatre, is formed of a row of seats, benches or

thrones. The ranks thus formed Dante likens to the petals of an immense

rose, each petal of the mystic flower representing a seat in glory, and

the petals on one and the same plane, a circle or tier of the celestial

amphitheatre. Dante also compares the abode of bliss to a realm, a

garden, or a hill around which the blessed are grouped in ecstatic

contemplation of the Divine Light; but the simile he mainly uses is that

of the mystic rose, which, although he never actually employs the figure,

he derived, no doubt, from the more graphic image of an amphitheatre.

The moral principle underlying the distribution of the blessed in the

various tiers of the amphitheatre is applied with as strict a regard

for symmetry as is shown in the geometrical design. All is governed by

law and nothing is left to chance. The greater or lesser height of each

circle corresponds to the greater or lesser degree of holiness attained

by the souls, who, again, occupy a position on the left or right in each

circle according to the nature of their faith before or after the advent

of Christ. Further, the saints of the Old Testament are separated from

those of the New Testament by subdivisions within each sector, some of

which are in a vertical, others in a horizontal, sense. Men and women,

children and adults, all are grouped in their respective classes in

the various parts of the rose. Perfect symmetry marks the whole scheme

throughout. Thus we find that Eve, the mother of human sinners, sits

underneath Mary, the Mother of Christ the Redeemer; on the left of Mary

sits Adam, the father of mankind, and on her right, St. Peter, the father

of the Church. The blessed occupy their seats in Glory for one or the

other of two reasons—either owing to their works plus grace, or to Divine

grace alone; in the former category are the adults, in the latter, the

children who were only saved through the faith of their parents. A third

class, formed of the children and adults who sit in the places left

vacant by rebel angels, might indeed be added. In conclusion, the spirits

occupying the principal seats in the first circles, though not actually

so classified by Dante, fall into three groups—the patriarchs and

apostles, such as Adam, Moses, John the Baptist, St. Peter, and St. John

the Evangelist; beneath them, the holy doctors of the religious orders,

such as St. Francis, St. Benedict, and St. Augustine; and, still lower,

the laymen and clergy who followed the teaching of these doctors.

In spite of these differences in degree, the life of the blessed is

essentially one and the same. With their gaze fixed on the focus of

Divine light, they contemplate God and know Him more or less perfectly

according to the strength of their vision, which, in turn, depends

on the purity and intensity of the Divine love they felt on earth.

The difference in degree is made outwardly manifest by the greater or

lesser brilliance each spirit emits; but it does not imply any essential

difference either in the vision itself or in the spiritual delight of

the souls; nor can it give rise to any desire on the part of those in

the lower ranks to occupy a higher seat, and still less can it cause

any feeling of envy, for this would be incompatible with the spirit of

brotherly love that unites them in the love of God; each, moreover, is

aware that the joy experienced in the degree allotted to him is greater

than he could possibly deserve.

6. Of this clearly defined scheme the Dantists have been able to trace

but little to other Christian authors; indeed, with the exception of

the situation of paradise in the Empyrean, almost the whole of Dante’s

architecture of heaven has been attributed to the inventive faculty of

the poet himself. Again, therefore, before pronouncing final judgment on

the originality or otherwise of the conception, we would suggest that the

Moslem sources be consulted. In this respect especial interest attaches

to the works of the mystical writers of Islam, and more particularly to

the detailed and picturesque descriptions of the realm of glory given by

the Sufi of Murcia, Ibn Arabi.

The division of heaven into seven mansions, in diametric opposition

to the seven stages of hell, dates from the early centuries of Islam.

Ibn Abbas, in a _hadith_ that is repeated again and again in the holy

books of Islam, refers to these divisions indiscriminately as gardens,

gates, mansions, stages or circular strata; and with names derived from

the Koran he enumerates them in the following order[344]: The first and

highest is the mansion of the Divine Majesty; the second, the mansion of

peace; the third, the Garden of Eden; the fourth, the garden of refuge;

the fifth, the garden of eternity; the sixth, the garden of paradise; and

the seventh, the garden of delight. Other versions of the _hadith_ change

the order of the mansions, add one to their number, or vary the names

given above.

As early as the tenth century a moral principle, in the form of a

graduation of the bliss of glory, was introduced into the architectural

scheme. The author of the _Corra_, who lived at Samarcand in that

century, says that at intervals, according to their merits, God grants

the Beatific Vision to His blessed; they, for example, who mortified

their flesh and gave their whole life to His service, shall enjoy the

vision every Friday; those who indulged in the pleasures to which youth

is prone, shall behold it but once a month; and they who only served God

toward the end of their days, but once a year; whilst such as spent their

life in sin and only repented on their death-bed, shall see the vision

but once throughout eternity.[345]

Other _hadiths_ attempt to connect the seven or eight mansions of bliss

with as many categories of blessed.[346] One such classification may

serve as an example: The first heaven is reserved for the prophets,

the envoys of God, the martyrs, and the saints; the second for such as

fulfilled the rites of prayer and ablution; the third for men of holy

meditation; the fourth, for the devout in religious practice; the fifth,

for the ascetics; the sixth, for those militant in the spiritual strife

with passion; the seventh, for pilgrims; and the eighth, for those who

were chaste and charitable towards their neighbours.

From these _hadiths_ the mystics gradually elaborated their doctrine

of the Beatific Vision, which, besides being originally Christian,

was influenced by the neo-Platonic tradition of Moslem philosophy.

Ibn Ayshun, of Toledo, who lived in the first half of the tenth

century, describes the vision of the countenance of God as being like

the contemplation of the sun or moon when unhidden by clouds.[347]

Two centuries later, Shakir Ibn Muslim, of Orihuela, enumerates the

different aspects in which God appears to the blessed according to his

attributes of perfection, beauty, eloquence, mercy, bounty, wisdom,

and kindness.[348] The author of the _Tadhkira_, in the middle of

the thirteenth century, completes the doctrine by stating that even

after each vision of the Divine essence the eternal light continues to

reign in the souls of the blessed, so that the bliss of glory may be

uninterrupted.[349] The Cordovan ascetic further establishes a difference

of degree in the enjoyment of the vision, according to the merit of the

soul; to each precept of the Divine law there corresponds a degree of

bliss that can only be attained by compliance with that precept.[350]

In the twelfth century, the famous Oriental theologian and philosopher,

Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi, availed himself of the elements contained in the

Koran and the _hadiths_ to trace a general scheme of paradise showing

eight main divisions, subdivided into a hundred degrees or stages.[351]

Thus, in the centuries immediately preceding the Divine Comedy the

structure of paradise, as conceived in the mind of Eastern and Western

Islam, appears complete in outline and detail.

IX

THE CELESTIAL PARADISE OF ISLAM IN THE DIVINE COMEDY—(CONCLUSION)

1. Of the doctrine of paradise in general it may be safely said that

nobody succeeded like the Murcian, Ibn Arabi, in blending all previous

conceptions into one harmonious whole. Not only is Ibn Arabi’s scheme

embellished by the artistry of its author, but it is so illustrated

by means of geometrical sketches that the general plan of his various

heavenly mansions can be seen at a glance. This, from our point of view,

is its most interesting feature.

In the cosmology of Ibn Arabi, the entire universe is represented by a

circle or sphere[352]; and the plan of the cosmos consists of a series

of concentric spheres, which rise one above another with progressively

increasing radii. At present we are only concerned with the units

comprised between the earth and the Divine Throne. These, beginning at

the bottom, are in turn[353]: the spheres of the earth, water, air and

ether; then, in the astronomical world, follow in succession the spheres

of the moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and that of the

Fixed Stars; still further is the sphere without stars or the _primum

mobile_, where the astronomical world ends, and, finally, above all,

shining like a focus of eternal light, the Throne of God Himself.

The paradise of the elect Ibn Arabi places between the heaven of the

Fixed Stars and that of the _primum mobile_. Here, other eight concentric

spheres, rising, as before behind and above each other, represent the

eight mansions of the celestial paradise. These appear in the following

order: 1. The abode of grace; 2. The mansion of perseverance; 3. The

abode of peace; 4. The garden of eternity; 5. The garden of refuge;

6. The garden of delight; 7. The garden of paradise; 8. The Garden of

Eden.[354]

Each of these eight spheres[355] is divided into innumerable _grades_—Ibn

Arabi, like Dante, claims that the number of these is considerably more

than several thousand—which are grouped to form one hundred different

categories. These in turn represent a still more limited number of

classes of the chosen, which, if the followers of Mahomet only are

considered, do not number more than twelve. Each grade contains countless

individual _mansions_ or _dwelling-places_.[356]

[Illustration: Fig. 1]

2. Now, no great effort of imagination is required to trace the analogy

between this fantastic conception and Dante’s rose. True, Ibn Arabi does

not employ the simile of the rose in his text; but a mere glance at his

plan, which, drawn with geometric precision, he himself has handed down

to us, will at once suggest such a simile.

The figure given here (see Fig. 1) is as it appears in the _Futuhat_,

III, 554, with the Arabic names translated. In its construction it is

identical with the figure appearing under the number 32 in Manfredi

Porena’s _Commento grafico alla Divina Commedia_ as the plan of

Dante’s rose (see Fig. 2). Porena in his description compares it to an

amphitheatre the tiers of which are occupied by the elect.

3. Apart from this similarity in geometrical design, there is a further

affinity between Dante’s rose and a Moslem myth whereby paradise is

likened to a tree. Ibn Arabi, availing himself of a tradition very

popular in Islam,[357] introduces into his plan a mighty tree depending

from the heaven of the _primum mobile_, or roof of the abode of glory,

whose foliage spreads throughout the seven celestial spheres and each

branch of which penetrates one of the countless individual mansions of

bliss. This tree he calls the tree of happiness, or bliss (see Fig. 1).

Now, if this tree were to be depicted on Ibn Arabi’s plan of the mansions

of glory, the effect of its myriad branches extending to their set places

on each of the seven strata of paradise would be to give the whole figure

the appearance of seven concentric circles of leaves; and this is exactly

the impression one gets on looking into a rose.[358]

[Illustration: Fig. 2]

[Illustration: Fig. 3]

Nor does this mythical tree of Islam, growing downwards from the heaven

of the highest sphere, appear to have been out of Dante’s ken. His

conception of the astronomical spheres (and they also from time to time

serve as mansions of the blessed) is likewise that of a huge inverted

tree, each one of whose branches corresponds to one of the astronomical

spheres and whose roots are in the Empyrean. This image he forms when he

reaches the sphere of Jupiter.[359] It must be admitted, however, that

Dante’s simile is not nearly so closely related to the Moslem model as

is the same simile of one of his imitators. We refer to Federigo Frezzi

in his _Quadriregio_[360]:

“Poscia trovammo la pianta più bella

Del paradiso, la pianta felice

Che conserva la vita e rinnovella.

_Su dentro al cielo avea la sua radice_

_E giù inverso terra i rami spande_

Ov’era un canto che qui non si dice.

Era la cima lata e tanto grande

Che più, al mio parer, che duo gran miglia

Era dall’una all’altra delle bande.”

The other similes Dante uses in describing paradise—when he compares it

to a walled garden, to a kingdom over which Christ and Mary reign, and to

a hill around which the elect gather to contemplate the Divine light—are

also to be found in Ibn Arabi. To him, indeed, the whole of paradise is

simply a huge garden divided into seven circular parts by means of seven

walls or luminous spheres[361]; and its most sublime mansion, Eden, Ibn

Arabi terms the palace or mansion of the King,[362] because here there

rises a “hill of exceeding whiteness around which the elect gather to

contemplate the Almighty.”[363]

4. We will now proceed to compare the moral structure of Dante’s paradise

with that of Ibn Arabi. The outstanding feature of both works is the

tendency of the writers to exaggerate the number of divisions and

subdivisions of the various categories in which the elect are placed.

Ibn Arabi, indeed, insists that “no good deed that ever was performed

is without its own appropriate reward in paradise.”[364] The chief

categories are eight in number, just as in the human body there are eight

organs, controlled by the soul: the eyes, ears, tongue, hands, stomach,

pudenda, feet, and heart. It will be remembered that this principle

formed the basis of the moral structure of hell, for Ibn Arabi, as well

as Dante, held that the strictest symmetry should be observed in the

conceptions of the two worlds of the after-life. Of the eight categories

in question, then, each has its reward in one of the eight spheres or

strata of the celestial paradise.

Further, these eight rewards are subdivided into a multiplicity of

grades, each one of which is assigned to a specific virtuous deed. The

age of the blessed—to cite but one example, which is eminently Dantean—is

taken into consideration when the rewards are administered, so that an

old man, who has led a sinless life in the faith of Islam, is appointed

to a higher grade than a younger man of equal innocence, even although

both may have been distinguished for the same virtue.

Another striking similarity between the two works is to be found in the

allotment of the various places that the elect occupy in each of the

eight spheres of glory. According to Ibn Arabi, three reasons determine

the allocation: the first, grace alone, in which category are placed

children who died before reason came and adults who lived according to

the natural law; the second, personal virtue or good deeds performed

by adults; and the third, inheritance of the celestial mansions left

unoccupied by the damned.[365] To strengthen the parallel, Ibn Arabi

points out that the second reason does not imply that the happiness of

glory is only the due reward for good done on earth. It is, he explains,

something much greater than a mere recompense.[366]

By way of exemplifying how the elect are distributed, Ibn Arabi

enumerates four of the principal categories in the higher grades: first,

the prophets or God’s messengers, who occupy pulpits in the highest

grade; secondly, the saints, who, as disciples of the prophets, are

seated on thrones in the next grade; thirdly, the wise men, who, having

in life acquired a scientific knowledge of God, are placed in chairs in

a still lower grade; and fourthly, the pure in heart, who, having only

gained a knowledge of Divine things through revelation, occupy gradins

beneath the others.[367] Dante’s distribution is on the same lines. In

the highest seats he places the prophets, such as Adam and Moses, and

the apostles, St. Peter, St. John, and so forth; beneath these, the

doctors of the religious orders, St. Francis, St. Benedict, and St.

Augustine; and lastly, the faithful, who obeyed the commandments.[368] It

is also worthy of note that Dante in his description of the seats of the

blessed uses the same terms as Ibn Arabi, namely, _thrones_ or _chairs_,

_gradins_ or _forms_.[369]

In the four general categories in question Ibn Arabi again distinguishes,

although somewhat vaguely, between the Moslem elect and those who,

before Islam, professed the other religions revealed by the prophets of

Israel, of whom, according to Moslem theology, Christ was one.[370] This

vagueness is surprising, seeing that the Dantean division of the two

elects had been established in Moslem tradition long before Ibn Arabi’s

time. A _hadith_, attributed to Ali, son-in-law of the prophet, clearly

defines it[371]:

“At the Divine Throne are two pearls, one white and the other

yellow, each of which contains 70,000 mansions. The white pearl

is for Mahomet and his flock; the yellow for Abraham and his.”

The analogy between this idea and Dante’s distribution is obvious. In

the mystic rose the prophets, patriarchs and saints of the Old Testament

are placed in the left sector and those who lived after Christ in the

right.[372] The similitude, however, extends to the actual details. Just

as Ibn Arabi couples Mahomet with Adam in the same degree of the Beatific

Vision, so does Dante place Adam with St. Peter in the mystic rose.[373]

5. Let us now study awhile the scene of the glorious triumph of the elect

as depicted by the Murcian mystic. Briefly, the _Futuhat_ description is

as follows:

“The blessed gather around the snow-white hill to await the

epiphany of the Lord. As they stand, each in his respective

grade and place and magnificently arrayed,[374] a dazzling

light shines forth before which they fall prostrate. Through

their eyes into the inmost recesses of their bodies and souls

the light penetrates, so that each of the blessed becomes all

eye and ear and sees and hears with his entire spirit, such

is the virtue conferred on them by the light. Thus are they

prepared for the presence of the Almighty. And then the Prophet

appears before them, saying, ‘Prepare, then, ye chosen, for the

manifestation of the Lord.’ The three veils that enshroud the

Almighty—the veils of glory, majesty and power—are drawn aside

at His will, and the truth is revealed, one vision, yet in the

dual epiphany of the two names, the beautiful and the good. The

magnificence of the Lord leaves the elect spellbound, and the

brilliance of the wonderful vision pervades their beings.”

“This vision, although in itself one and the same so far

as the elect are concerned, has, nevertheless, different

aspects.[375] Those prophets, who only acquired their knowledge

of God through the faith received from God Himself and did

not increase that knowledge by reason and contemplation, will

behold the vision through the eye of faith. The saint whose

faith in God was inspired by a prophet will see it through the

mirror of that prophet. If, however, he also gained a knowledge

of God through contemplation, then will he have two visions,

one of science and the other of faith. And so also will it be

with the prophet. Similarly, the saint who, unenlightened by

any prophet, acquired his knowledge, either through his own

reason or direct from the Almighty, or in both of these ways,

will be ranged in the Beatific Vision with the men of science

or those of simple faith, or with both of these classes. Those

who obtained from God the mystic intuition only will occupy a

grade in glory apart from all the other elect. To sum up, the

three aspects which God presents to the elect correspond to

the different ways in which a knowledge of Him was gained on

earth; and he who acquired that knowledge in all three ways

will witness three Divine manifestations in the same instant.

The visions of the elect in these three categories are graded

thus: the prophets who received supernatural inspiration from

God excel those saints who followed their teaching; while

those who were neither prophets nor their disciples but simply

saints and friends of God will, if they achieved the desired

end by rational contemplation, be inferior in the Beatific

Vision to the mystics, because reason, like a veil, will

intervene between them and the Divine truth, and their efforts

to raise it will be of no avail. In like manner the followers

of the prophets will be unable to raise the veil of prophetic

revelation. And so it is that the Beatific Vision, pure and

unalloyed, will be the heritage exclusively of the prophets

and those mystics who, like the prophets, received Divine

inspiration on earth.”

“In each grade of vision a relative degree of bliss will

be experienced.[376] Thus, the joy of some of the saints

will be purely intellectual and that of others, emotional,

physical, or imaginative, as the case may be. As for the

mass of the faithful, the enjoyment derived by each from the

Beatific Vision will also be proportional to his capacity for

understanding the theological dogmas of his master. Further,

as the mentality of the multitude is chiefly imaginative,

so will be their knowledge of God and their participation

in the Beatific Vision. This, too, will be the lot of the

majority of the men of rational science, few of whom, although

superior to the multitude, are on earth able to conceive the

absolute abstraction from all matter. Hence it is that the

greater part of the truths revealed by God through religion

have been presented to the multitude in a form adapted to

its understanding, though invariably accompanied by vague

allusions, which are intelligible only to a select few of

those of superior intellect.”[377]

Continuing, Ibn Arabi from time to time gives further interesting

details[378]:

“In the Beatific Vision God manifests Himself to the elect in

a general epiphany, which, nevertheless, assumes various forms

corresponding to the mental conceptions of God formed by the

faithful on earth. There is, then, one single epiphany, which

is multiple only by reason of the difference of forms in which

it is received. The Vision impregnates the elect with Divine

light, each experiencing the Vision according to the knowledge

of the Divine dogma or dogmas gained by him on earth.”

“The Divine light pervades the beings of the elect and radiates

from them, reflected as if by mirrors, on everything around

them. The spiritual enjoyment produced by the contemplation of

this reflection is even greater than that of the Vision itself.

For, at the moment when they experience the Beatific Vision,

the elect are transported and, losing all consciousness, cannot

appreciate the joys of the Vision. Delight they feel, but the

very intensity of the delight makes it impossible for them to

realise it. The reflected light, on the other hand, does not

overpower them, and they are thus able to participate in all

its joys.”

The fact of there being different grades of glory engenders no bitter

feeling, much less envy, in the minds of those of the elect that occupy

the lower grades. Ibn Arabi makes this point clear.[379]

“Each knows his allotted grade and seeks it as a child seeks

its mother’s breast, and iron, the lodestone. To occupy or

even aspire to a higher grade is impossible. In the grade in

which he is placed each sees the realisation of his highest

hopes. He loves his own grade passionately and cannot conceive

that a higher could exist. If it were not so, heaven would

not be heaven but a mansion of grief and bitter disillusion.

Nevertheless, those in the superior participate in the

enjoyment of the lower grades.”

6. From this description, so rich in detail, in picturesque images and in

philosophico-theological ideas, we may now select those cardinal theses

that are prominent in Ibn Arabi and compare them with Dante’s ideas.[380]

Firstly, the life of glory, according to the Murcian mystic, consists

fundamentally in the Beatific Vision, which is conceived as a

manifestation, revelation, or epiphany of the Divine light. God is a

focus of light, the rays of which serve to prepare the elect to look upon

the Almighty.

The parallel between this conception of Ibn Arabi and that of Dante need

not be insisted upon; both in idea and artistic execution the two are

identical.[381] For the latter, mediæval Christian literature furnishes

no precedent whatever. The former, however, the idea or theological

thesis of the necessity of a Divine light with which to behold the

Almighty, had been conceived and discussed by the scholastics long before

Dante’s time. St. Thomas Aquinas freely refers to a _lumen gloriae_,

which strengthens the human understanding for participation in the

Beatific Vision.[382]

At the same time it is certain that St. Thomas Aquinas himself admits

seeking inspiration, not among the Holy Fathers and scholastic

theologians, but among the Moslem philosophers.[383] It is the authority

of Alfarabius, Avicenna, Avempace and Averrhoes that he quotes, when he

attempts to explain the Beatific Vision in terms of philosophy, and it

is the theory of Averrhoes, of the vision of the substances separated by

the soul, that he accepts as the one most suitable for the elect’s vision

of God.[384]

That Aquinas should not have recourse to patristic or scholastic

literature was but natural, seeing he would find there little or no

information about so abstruse a theme. The chroniclers of dogma recognise

that the philosophic explanation of this article of the Christian faith

is not to be found in the Holy Fathers nor in the early theologians.

St. John Chrysostom even denies the vision of the Divine essence. St.

Ambrose, St. Augustine, and with the latter all the Latins up to the

eighth century, placed the blessed, according to the Scripture, _face to

face_ with the Divinity in the Vision; and they make the least possible

comment on the sacred text to avoid falling into any anthropomorphic

error, maintaining that it is impossible for the human eye to look

upon the Vision.[385] Those that go more deeply into the subject,

like St. Epiphanes, merely arrive at the conclusion that the soul

requires assistance before it can look upon God.[386] What the nature

of this assistance is, neither the Scriptures nor the Holy Fathers have

determined. This is admitted by Petavius. Although the sacred texts tell

of a Divine _lumen_, this has no bearing on the scholastic theory of the

_lumen gloriae_. St. Thomas, indeed, held that the _lumen gloriae_ is a

principle of vision, as it were a habit or faculty of seeing (akin to

the sensitive faculty inherent in the eye), by means of which principle

the human mind is trained to behold God. On the other hand, the _lumen_

of the Psalms (XXXV, 10), “In lumine tuo videbimus lumen,” was regarded

by Origenes, St. Cyril, the pseudo-Dionysius, and St. Augustine, as a

synonym of Christ, in Whose light we should see the Father. From which

Petavius concludes that the theory of the _lumen gloriae_ is a novelty

introduced by the scholastics.[387] He finishes by citing Plotinus as the

only thinker that saw even vaguely the necessity, for the Vision of God,

of a _lumen_ which is God Himself. Had there only been added to his great

store of patristic learning some knowledge of Moslem theology (which

was unknown in his century), he would have completed the cycle of his

historical investigations and filled the gap of centuries that separates

Plotinus from the scholastics.

He would have found, indeed, in Algazel and in the Spaniards, Ibn Hazm

and Averrhoes—to mention but three great theologians—the roots from which

the theory of the _lumen gloriae_ sprouted. Algazel dedicates a complete

chapter of his _Ihia_ to the development of this theory.[388] Long

before St. Thomas, he defined the Beatific Vision as a perfection of the

understanding and, in order to convey an idea of the vision of glory, he

establishes a complete, although metaphorical, parallel between it and

the physical vision. He says:

As the physical vision is a complement and perfection of the

fantastic representation of the object, the Beatific Vision

is a clearer and more perfect perception of God as He appears

to the mind in this life. He proceeds[389]: “God will reveal

Himself to the elect in all the splendour of His manifestation.

This epiphany, compared with the knowledge of God possessed

by the elect, will be like the manifestation of an object in

a mirror compared with a fantastic representation of it. That

epiphany of God is what we call the Beatific Vision. It is,

then, a real vision, provided it is clear that here we do

not understand by _vision_ a complement of the imaginative

representation of the imaginable object, represented in a

concrete form, with dimensions, site, etc. The knowledge which

you have gained of God on earth will be completed in heaven

and will become presence or experience. Between this presence

in the future life and the knowledge acquired on earth there

will be no more difference than what comes from a greater

manifestation and clearness.”

Ibn Hazm, the great eleventh-century theologian of Cordova, expounds a

similar doctrine:

“We do not admit the possibility of seeing God with a sort of

human vision. We simply maintain that God will be seen by means

of a power distinct from that which we have in our eyes, a

power that will be inspired in us by God. Some people call it a

_sixth sense_. And the proof lies in the fact that, as we now

know God with our souls, which in this life He has strengthened

to that end, so afterwards God may strengthen our vision in

order that we may behold Him.”[390]

We have already seen how Averrhoes’ theory was accepted by St. Thomas as

an explanation of the Beatific Vision. But he goes further. In one of his

theological treatises,[391] dealing with the texts of the Koran which

compare God to a light, he says:

“God, being the cause of the existence of all beings and the

cause of our being able to see them, has rightly been called

_Light_; for the same relation exists between light and the

colours, that is to say, light is the cause of their existence

and also of our being able to see them. Nor can any doubt exist

about the dogma of the vision of God, which is a light, in the

life to come.”

And after refuting all objections, he concludes, like Algazel, by

asserting that the Vision will consist in an increased knowledge of the

Divine essence.

7. The analogies, however, between Dante’s conception and that of Ibn

Arabi are not limited to the general theory of the _lumen gloriae_. Other

even more striking similarities are:

Secondly. In both descriptions the elect are in the same attitude, their

gaze fixed on the focus of Divine light.[392] The different grades in

the Beatific Vision depend, according to Dante, on the degree of love

that each of the elect shows for God, whereas in Ibn Arabi it appears to

be the nature of the knowledge that the souls possessed of the Divinity

that counts.[393] It would seem, then, that Dante adopted the point of

view of a voluntaryist, and Ibn Arabi, that of an intellectualist. The

difference, however, is more apparent than real. For Dante frequently

appears to adopt Ibn Arabi’s standpoint as an intellectualist; on several

occasions he attributes the grade of glory to the nature of the faith or

the illuminating grace with which the soul knew God.[394] Further Ibn

Arabi, like all Moslem mystics, is essentially a voluntaryist; virtue, in

his opinion, is based, not on theological knowledge or dead faith, but on

divine love, at once the cause and the fruit of the knowledge that the

soul has gained of God. He therefore reserves a prominent grade in the

Beatific Vision for the contemplative mystics and places in an inferior

position such saints as were also philosophers.[395] This doctrine was

expounded by Algazel before Ibn Arabi. The happiness of heaven—he writes

in his _Ihia_[396]—will be proportionate to the intensity of the love for

God, just as this love will be commensurate with the knowledge of God

gained by the elect on earth and called by Revelation, faith.

Thirdly. The difference in grades is shown, not in the Beatific Vision

itself, but in the variety of forms in which the Divine light is made

manifest to the elect and in the greater or lesser brilliance of the

light they receive and reflect.[397] These three ideas of Ibn Arabi have

also their respective parallels in Dante’s conception. In _Par._ XXX,

121, he says: “There, distance makes no difference, for where God governs

the natural law has no power whatever.” In this way Dante establishes the

essential unity of the vision in its different grades. If in these grades

there is any difference, it is not in the thing seen but in the way of

seeing it. Accordingly, in _Par._ XXXIII, 109, he adds: “Not because

there were more than one aspect of the light I saw, which itself is

immutable, but because my vision, strengthened by its contemplation, was

able to see it in another manner.”

Finally, that the light acquired is reflected by the elect, and its

greater or lesser brilliance distinguishes their greater or lesser

glory, are points frequently alluded to by Dante in the Paradiso.[398]

The Dantists have explained this theme by the Thomist doctrine of the

endowments of the glorious body, one of which is the radiance it derives

from the glory of the soul.[399] Now, we have already seen how Ibn Arabi,

before St. Thomas, likewise explains the radiance of the elect by the

superabundance of Divine light, which pervades the body of each blessed

and is reflected from all around it. Nor was this an original idea of

Ibn Arabi’s, but merely a repetition of the doctrine of the _Ishraqi_

mystics. Indeed, in the tenth century of our era, the author of the

_Corra_, having discovered it in some _hadiths_ of a still earlier date,

used the theme in his description of paradise. In those pictures of

the glorious life, the external brightness of the elect indicates the

grade of glory of each. The following passages put the matter beyond all

doubt[400]:

“He who belongs to the highest category of the elect so

illumines the others that the whole of heaven is bright with

the radiance of his face.” Again, it is stated that “the elect

see one another in paradise as we see stars shining in the

sky”; that “if one of the elect were to descend to earth, he

would eclipse the light of the sun”; that Fatima, the daughter

of Mahomet, is called the Brilliant, the Splendid, on account

of the intensity of her light; that “the robes of the blessed

reflect the Divine light”; that “when the Almighty appears in

the Beatific Vision and the light of the Divine countenance

falls on the faces of the elect, it causes them to shine with

such brilliance that they appear transfigured with ecstasy”;

and, lastly, that after the Beatific Vision the elect marvel at

their own greater brilliance, increased by the reflection of

the countenance of God.

Fourthly. The Beatific Vision will engender joy or delight, proportional

to the various grades of the Vision, but so intense as to produce ecstasy

in the soul. As is well-known, this idea of Ibn Arabi’s reappears in

full in Dante’s work.[401] The idea of proportion may, it is true,

have been taken from the Thomist doctrine rather than from Islamic

sources.[402] Not so the idea of the ecstasy; of this there is not a word

in the Thomist doctrine, which confines itself to an explanation of the

philosophic origin of the three endowments of the blessed soul: vision,

delectation, and comprehension of the Divine essence. Whereas, if the

ecstasy in Dante be psychologically analysed and compared with that in

Ibn Arabi, various constituent elements common to both will be found:

loss of memory, somnolence or semi-consciousness, produced on the soul by

the intensity of delight.[403]

Fifthly. The fact of there being different grades in the Beatific Vision

excites no feeling of envy or sadness among those in the lower grades.

Each accepts his share of the glory as if it were impossible even to

desire anything greater. And this is so, because all love the grade they

occupy; and, further, because, if it were not thus, heaven would not be a

mansion of peace and delight.[404]

Dante puts the same explanation in the mouth of Piccarda[405]: “Our

desires, awakened only by the love of the Holy Spirit, are satisfied

in the way that He determined.” To Dante’s inquiry whether there is no

desire on the part of the souls to attain to a higher place, Piccarda

replies: “Brother, a feeling of charity quells such a desire, and we long

for nothing more than what we have. Were we to aspire to a higher sphere,

our wish would be at variance with the will of the Almighty, and such

disagreement does not exist in the kingdom of heaven.” Dante, satisfied

with the explanation, concludes: “Then I understood why in the heavens

all is paradise, notwithstanding the different degrees of bliss.”

8. The identity thus established between the five fundamental theses of

the Murcian Ibn Arabi on the Beatific Vision and Dante’s is strong enough

to render comment unnecessary. In comparison, the other similarities,

such as picturesque details and artistic devices, used in both

descriptions in an attempt to delineate by geometrical figures the Divine

truth as seen in the glorious vision, are vague.

The analogy that was revealed in the discussion of Version C of the

second cycle of the _Miraj_[406] between the apotheosis witnessed by

Mahomet and that described by Dante need not be dwelt upon. It is as well

to recall, however, that the image representing the Divinity in that

version, which dates back to the eighth century, is identical with that

employed by Dante: a focus of light, surrounded by concentric circles,

composed of tiers of resplendent angels. This description was perpetuated

in Islam, and Ibn Arabi frequently reproduced it in his _Futuhat_,

notably in his portrayal of God at the final judgment.[407]

But the similarity extends further. Dante, having arrived at the

spiritual cusp of his glorious ascension, attempts to explain the mystery

of the Trinity by means of the same geometrical circular symbol: three

circumferences, of equal size and multi-coloured, the first two of which

seem to be a reflection of the other, after the manner of two rainbows,

and the third as of fire, emitted by the other two.[408] Now, the more

shrewd among the commentators, although acknowledging the ingenuity shown

by Dante in his conception, admit that this geometrical symbol of the

three circles, as a representation of the persons of the Trinity, is more

of an enigma than it is explanatory. No details are given of the colour

of the first two circles or of the geometrical relationship between the

three, whether they are concentric or eccentric, whether they are tangent

to or cut each other—in fact, no help whatever to interpret the symbol is

given.[409] One fact, however, stands out: Dante uses the symbol of the

circle to represent God in all His aspects—as One in the Essence, as the

Father, as the Son, and as the Holy Ghost. Thus, the symbol of the circle

represents God conceived both as the principle of emanation and as the

emanation itself.

Now, it is well known that the same use of the circle as a symbol of the

Divinity was made in the Plotinian metaphysics.[410] The _Apocryphal

Theology_ of Aristoteles, as also the apocryphal book of Hermes

Trismegistus and the _Liber de Causis_, made this symbol known to the

Moslems and the scholastics; but it was the Moslems, the _Ishraqi_

mystics in particular, who had recourse to the circle on every possible

occasion to explain their ideas on emanation, both in their metaphysics

and their cosmology.[411]

The Murcian Ibn Arabi, more than any of the _Ishraqis_, employs circles,

concentric and eccentric, secant and tangent, to represent the Almighty,

whether in His abstract individuality, in His attributes, names and

relations, in His manifestations _ad extra_, or in His emanation.[412]

A circle of white light on a red background, also of light, with two

radii projecting from it, as it gently moves but never changes, is the

symbol by which he represents the individual essentiality of God.[413]

The procession of the beings who emanate from God the essence is also

symbolised in the _Futuhat_ by a circle.[414] The centre, like a focus

of light, is God, from Whom the contingent beings emanate, just as the

radii of a circle proceed from one central point to terminate in a

series of points which, when joined together, form the circumference,

symbolical of the cosmos; and just as these points are in their essence

indistinguishable the one from the other, so also in the emanation of

God is there a unity of substance and a multiplicity of epiphanies; the

beings are merely the aspects, or the names and forms under which the

Divine light appears.

These emanations likewise are represented by circles[415]; at the

innumerable points on the first circumference, the centre of which is

God, an infinity of other circumferences cut the circle; and these in

turn produce other circles, secant as before, and so on _ad infinitum_.

As the circles multiply, the centre of their origin, God, becomes hidden,

nevertheless, all reflect the light of His first epiphany. All the

ingenious and paradoxical similitudes which Ibn Arabi deduces from this

symbol of the Divine emanation are founded upon one main idea, the basis

of his pantheism, half emanative, half immanent. God and the creatures

are one and the same substance; the multiplicity of the emanations in no

wise changes the essence of their origin; and these emanations are merely

distinct affinities, who represent the immanence of the origin from which

they spring.

This general plan of the Divine emanation becomes less involved when Ibn

Arabi proceeds to represent the ontological categories alone by the

symbol of concentric circles.[416] The supreme series of these consists

of three substances, hypostases or emanations from the One Absolute:

first, the Spiritual Substance, from which proceed all those beings who

are not God; secondly, the Universal Intellect, which is the Divine

light by which the beings of the Spiritual Substance receive objective

reality; thirdly, the Universal Soul, likewise an emanation from the One,

through the Intellect.[417] This triad of substances, which to Ibn Arabi

represents the essence of God, is shown in the _Futuhat_ by a geometrical

figure composed of three circles: the largest, which encircles the whole

figure, represents the Spiritual Substance; inside, two smaller eccentric

circles, almost tangent to one another, symbolise the Intellect and the

Soul. Ibn Arabi gives no reasons for these graphic details of his plan,

but the mere fact of his using the three circles as a symbol for the

three hypostases of his Trinity, to wit, the principle of prime aptitude

for the existence of all beings, the principle of active potency to give

such existence, and the principle of life of the cosmos, is in itself an

interesting point and one that will repay the study of those who, while

appreciating the subtle ingenuity of the Florentine poet, are not content

merely to admire his artistic creations but are eager to find out whence

he derived his ideas.[418] For, in spite of there being an abyss of

differences between the pantheistic triad of Ibn Arabi and the Catholic

dogma of the Trinity,[419] this in no wise affects the symbolical

representation of the two conceptions by a geometrical plan. To adapt

this plan to a representation of either conception would constitute

neither an absurdity in metaphysics nor a danger from the point of view

of dogma, provided that the key to the enigma were kept discreetly hidden

and concrete details in its interpretation were omitted; and this is

exactly what Dante did. In describing his symbol of the three circles,

he confines himself to stating that the three are one only as regards

“continenza,” i.e., substance, and that they are of different colours, to

distinguish the Three Divine Persons, in the unity of essence.[420]

[Illustration]

X

SYNTHESIS OF ALL THE PARTIAL COMPARISONS

1. The many minute comparisons made in this second part of our work will

now enable us to present, in the form of a synthesis of the partial

results, the following conclusions:

A considerable number of the details and topographical descriptions in

the Divine Comedy, although they have no parallels in the _Miraj_, have,

nevertheless, their precedents in Islamic literature, whether it be in

the Koran, in the _hadiths_, in the Moslem legends of the final judgment,

or in the doctrine of the theologians, philosophers, and mystics.

2. Among all the Islamic thinkers, the Murcian Ibn Arabi stands out as

the most likely to have furnished Dante with his model for the hereafter.

The infernal regions, the astronomical heavens, the circles of the mystic

rose, the choirs of angels around the focus of Divine light, the three

circles symbolising the Trinity—all are described by Dante exactly as

Ibn Arabi described them. This similarity betrays a relation such as

exists between copy and model. That it should be a mere coincidence is

impossible. The historical facts are these: in the thirteenth century,

twenty-five years before the birth of the Florentine poet, Ibn Arabi

introduced into his _Futuhat_ plans of the hereafter, all of which were

circular or spherical in design. Eighty years after, Dante produces a

marvellous poetical description of the after-life, the topographical

details of which are so precise that they enabled the poet’s commentators

in the twentieth century to represent them graphically by geometrical

plans; and these plans are essentially identical with those designed by

Ibn Arabi seven centuries before. If imitation by Dante can be disproved,

the manifest similarity is either an insolvable mystery or a miracle of

originality.[421]

3. Over and above this identity in construction there is a striking

analogy in decoration. Indeed, the Aaraf seems to be the prototype of

the limbo: the Gehenna, the model of the Inferno; the Sirat of the

Purgatorio; the meadow between purgatory and hell, of the Terrestrial

Paradise; and the eight gardens, of the Mystic Rose or Dantean Paradise.

4. The same unity in architectural design and the same hankering after

symmetry, physical as well as moral, are exhibited in both descriptions.

Jerusalem is the pivot on which the other world revolves; beneath it is

hell, in the last storey of which Lucifer is imprisoned; vertically above

Jerusalem is the theological heaven, where dwell the Divinity and the

elect; here, the number, as well as the subdivision, of the mansions is

identical with that of the infernal regions, with the result that each

place in hell has its antithesis in heaven.

5. The likeness between the two extends to many of the episodes

and scenes, some of which are literally identical. For instance,

the classification of the inhabitants of the limbo and their moral

suffering are analogous to those of the Aaraf; the black tempest of the

adulterers is the Koranic wind of Ad; the rain of fire that beats down

upon the Sodomites, who are driven round in a circle; the punishment

of the soothsayers, whose heads are reversed; Caiaphas, crucified upon

the ground and trampled upon; the robbers, devoured by serpents; the

authors of schism, with their bowels protruding and their arms cut

off, or with their head, talking, in their hands; the giants, whose

abnormal proportions are described in parallel terms; the torture of

the ice, which is the Moslem _zamharir_, suffered by traitors; the

picture of Lucifer, fast in ice like the Islamic Iblis; the dense smoke

that envelops the passionate in purgatory, identical with that which,

according to the Koran, will appear on the Day of Judgment; the double

ablution in the two rivers of the earthly paradise, and the meeting of

Dante with Beatrice, which is a parallel scene to that of the entry of

the soul into the Islamic paradise, after ablution in two rivers, and of

the meeting with its heavenly bride; and, lastly, the description of the

Beatific Vision as a Divine _lumen_, which produces outward brilliance,

intellectual clarity, and ecstatic delight.

6. If to all these analogies of architecture, topography, and setting,

are added those that were brought out in full relief in the first part

of this work, it will be apparent that the religious literature of Islam

alone, in the sole theme of the after-life—a theme mainly developed

around the _Miraj_—offers to investigators a more abundant harvest of

ideas, images, symbols, and descriptions, similar to those of Dante, than

all the other religious literatures together that have up to now been

consulted by Dantists in their endeavours to explain the genesis of the

Divine Comedy.

7. And here our study might be concluded, were it not for one important

doubt that may assail the mind of the investigator.

The artistic devices and theological-philosophic conceptions introduced

by Dante into his poem are attributed by Dantists to the poet’s own

inventive genius, stimulated to a certain extent by his acquaintance

with sundry popular legends that were broadcast throughout Europe in the

centuries immediately preceding his appearance. These mediæval legends

are technically referred to as the “precursors of the Divine Comedy.”

Now, it is certain that none of these furnishes the same explanation for

so many elements of Dante’s work as does the legend of the _Miraj_, and,

taken altogether, they fail to throw light upon many details which the

_Miraj_ and Islamic literature in general explain in full. Further, the

analogies between the Divine Comedy and its precursors are too slight to

establish any relation such as exists between model and copy.

In spite of all this, however, it might be possible to ignore the

hypothesis of Moslem influence over Dante’s poem and fall back on the

theory that the poem was conceived in the womb of Christian literature

and evolved from the seeds of eschatology contained in its mediæval

precursors. To rebut this theory and render the argument in favour of our

hypothesis conclusive, further investigation is, therefore, necessary.

The origin of the eschatological elements in the precursory legends must

be inquired into, in order to ascertain whether they were indeed all of

native Christian growth, or whether they do not also show signs of Moslem

ancestry such as the Divine Comedy has revealed to us.

PART III

_MOSLEM FEATURES IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS PRECURSORY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY_

PART III

_MOSLEM FEATURES IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS PRECURSORY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY_

I

INTRODUCTION

1. The belief in the immortality of the soul and the natural desire of

man to lift the veil shrouding the mysteries of the after-life appear

to have been the psychological motives that inspired the authors of the

many legends, popular throughout mediæval Christian Europe, the main

theme of which is the picturesque description of a fantastic journey

to the realms beyond the grave. These are the legends that, in the

opinion of the scholars, provided Dante with the raw material for his

poem.[422] Accordingly, they have been collected and analysed with

scrupulous care by the leading critics, who, needless to add, consider

them to be of purely Christian origin, either the spontaneous outcome

of popular imagination or the result of centuries of monastic learning

embellished by the artistic fancy of the troubadour.[423] The main

centre from which these legends radiated over Europe appears indeed to

have been the monasteries of Ireland. But it is interesting to note the

marked difference between the legends that appeared before and those

that appeared after the eleventh century. The monastic tales prior to

that century are so poor in material and inartistic in treatment, the

scenes representing the future life of the soul so trivial and at times

coarse that, even had Dante known of their existence, they could scarcely

have served as models for his work. This is admitted by D’Ancona

himself. Later on, however, fresh tales appear, revealing a more fertile

imagination and greater refinement on the part of the authors. These

D’Ancona calls “veri abbozzi e prenunziamenti del poema dantesco.”[424]

2. How is this sudden change in the development of the eschatological

theme in Western Christian literature to be accounted for? The hypothesis

of the influence of elements, foreign to Western culture but adaptable

thereto—inasmuch as their origin may in the end be traced back to the

same early Christian stock—would not appear to be extravagant. Graf

has observed that many particulars of the universal myth of paradise,

although omitted from the Biblical narrative, reappear in these Christian

legends; and he adds significantly that _it is not known whence they

came nor by what means they were transmitted_.[425] Yet Graf made most

methodical use of all the sources available to modern European erudition.

The eschatological literature of Islam alone seems to have escaped the

attention of this keen critic, for the Arabic texts, when not translated

into some European tongue, were as a sealed book to him. In the following

pages an attempt will be made to fill this gap by examining the Moslem

legends for evidence of poetic features that may have influenced the

Christian legends and thus explain their remarkable efflorescence in the

eleventh century.

3. General evidence of such influence may be found in a feature observed

by Graf himself. He notes that in many of the more popular legends of

that date the souls of the deserving, before being admitted to eternal

bliss, are led to a place other than the theological heaven, there

to await the day of resurrection and judgment. But, as Graf states,

from the fifth century onwards it was a dogma of the Church that the

righteous were straightway admitted to the Beatific Vision, and any

doctrine to the contrary was accursed.[426] Can stronger evidence exist

of the non-Catholic origin of those legends? Islam, on the other hand,

holds that from the time of death until the day of resurrection the

souls of the just await judgment either in their graves, miraculously

transformed into dwellings of temporary bliss, or in a garden of

happiness lying apart from heaven.[427] The souls of martyrs alone appear

to be immediately admitted to heaven, or rather to a Divine bower at the

gate leading to the theological heaven. As will be shown hereunder, the

scenes of this life of bliss prior to judgment bear a strong resemblance

to several episodes of the Christian legends; and this similarity in

descriptive detail, added to the coincidence of dogmatic belief, would

seem to confirm the hypothesis of the Moslem origin of those legends.

Nor is this belief, which, while still alive in Islam, had long been

abandoned as heterodox by Western Christianity, the only proof of Moslem

inspiration. Ozanam and D’Ancona state that many of the more poetic and

edifying of these legends never received the official approval of the

Church,[428] as if the latter had divined the existence, beneath the veil

of poetic adornment, of a doctrine not altogether compatible with the

orthodox creed. Indeed the palpable evidence of Islamic influence that

will be found in many of these mediæval legends fully justifies that

attitude.

4. In the following chapters the comparison of these legends with the

Moslem tales is based—be it frankly admitted—not upon their entire texts,

but upon the summaries furnished by the critics. Less minute, therefore,

than the comparison aimed at in the two former parts of this work, it

will serve to give a brief survey rather than a definite solution of this

interesting literary problem.

Nor is any attempt made to group the Christian legends according to

any new system. Where not already collected in cycles, they will be

considered separately, even at the risk of repetition. Such repetition

will not extend, however, to particulars the Islamic origin of which

has already been proved. To these brief allusion only will be made and

special attention paid to new features for which no Moslem precedent has

so far been found.

II

LEGENDS OF VISIONS OF HELL

1. _Legend of the Three Monks of the East or of St.

Macarius._[429]—Labitte and D’Ancona ascribe this legend to the sixth,

seventh or eighth century; but Ozanam maintains that it must be later

than Islam, seeing that in the epilogue the saint inquires of his

guests what news they have of the Saracens. Graf considers it to be of

Græco-Christian origin, but the mystery surrounding the person of the

saint himself contributes to render the origin of the story still more

obscure.

2. We will briefly examine the descriptive features that may point to a

Moslem origin.

In the course of their long and adventurous pilgrimage the

three monks cross Syria, Persia and Ethiopia. Passing through

a country inhabited by dog-headed men, they traverse a land of

pygmies and reach a territory swarming with dragons, basilisks,

asps and other venomous creatures. Pursuing their way, they

cross a desert region strewn with stones and rocks and, passing

through the country of elephants, finally come to a land

of deep shadow, behind which rises the monument erected by

Alexander the Great as a boundary marking the end of the world.

The early Moslem tales referred to in a former chapter as being the

remote prototypes of Dante’s hell, and notably a _hadith_ of the time of

Mahomet, give a similar division of the earth into seven regions, some of

which are identical with those of the legend. Thus, the dog-headed men

appear in the third earth of the _hadith_; the fifth is full of serpents

and scorpions; and the fourth is formed of sulphurous stones.[430]

Finally, the region of darkness recurs in all the versions of the tale

of Dulcarnain, who in Arabic legend is identified with Alexander the

Great; and the monument appears as a wall built, according to the Koran,

by Dulcarnain as a protection against the peoples of Gog and Magog, who,

according to a version of the Islamic legend—like the pygmies of the

Christian legend, whose stature was only an ell—measured but a hand and a

half in height.[431]

The three monks then penetrate into the infernal regions and there

witness tortures, some of which are noteworthy for their resemblance to

Moslem punishments already mentioned. Thus, as in all the versions of

the _Miraj_, sinners are seen tormented by serpents in a lake of burning

sulphur; further on, the monks behold a giant chained in the midst of

flames—a figure that also appeared in the _hadiths_ depicting hell[432];

again, a woman is shown tormented by an enormous serpent in a manner as

horrible as that of the Moslem tortures[433]; and so on.

3. The Moslem character of the tale, however, is most apparent from the

following episode:

The pilgrims have left hell behind them and now enter a wood

of lofty trees, upon the branches of which sit a multitude of

souls reincarnate in the form of birds. These cry out to God

with the voices of human beings begging Him to forgive them

their sins and explain to them the wonders they have witnessed.

Graf, in seeking to account for the frequent occurrence of this myth

in mediæval legend, finds no precedent but that of early Christian

symbolism, in which the soul is represented in the form of a bird. But

in Christian symbolism the dove alone represented the Holy Ghost and

only very occasionally, on the monuments of the Catacombs, the souls of

the faithful. Moreover, the legend does not speak of symbols, but of

the reincarnation of souls in birds, which live in a wood close, it is

precisely stated, to paradise—features that will be seen to have a more

satisfactory explanation in Moslem _hadiths_.

From early times it was a general belief in Islam that the spirits of men

who fell in Holy Warfare and, occasionally, the souls of the faithful

lived, incarnate in birds such as starlings, in a garden or wood at the

gates of paradise, awaiting the day of resurrection. These birds, some of

which are white and others green, fly freely through the garden and rest

on the branches of the trees, the fruits of which they eat. They drink

of the waters of the rivers flowing through the garden and spend their

time in converse with God. The souls of Moslem children are likewise

transferred to little birds, which fly about among the others. All these

birds know and speak to one another. According to other _hadiths_, they

are as white as doves or of a brilliant white like foam.

Some _hadiths_ quote the colloquies God is supposed to hold with these

birds, and the text remotely resembles the words attributed to the human

birds in the Christian legend. Thus[434]:

God asks them, “Know ye perchance of a better fate than that

reserved unto you?” and they answer, “No. Our sole desire

were that our spirits might return to our bodies once more to

fight and be sacrificed in Thy service.” In other _hadiths_,

the birds in which live the souls of the faithful other than

martyrs, are made to utter the prayer, “Gather us, O Lord, to

our brethren and grant us that which Thou hast promised unto

us.”

This belief was so deeply rooted in Islam that it gave rise to other holy

legends as well as to theological polemics.[435] In the legends, a bird

incarnating the spirit of an ascetic or mystic is supposed to appear on

earth. In their polemics, the theologians in all earnestness discuss the

nature of this being, which in the body of a bird harbours the mind of a

man.

4. _Vision of St. Paul._[436]—The passage in the Second Epistle to the

Corinthians (XII, 2-4), in which the Apostle refers to his being wafted

to the third heaven, was the nucleus round which this legend grew. It

first appeared in the form of an Apocalypse written in Greek about the

fourth century, and does not seem to have spread to Western Christianity

before the ninth century. Indeed, as a vision it only dates from the

twelfth, and in its more literary forms from the thirteenth century. In

transmission from East to West it underwent considerable changes, which

have not yet been explained.[437] A comparison of the later texts with

similar Moslem legends may therefore be of interest as pointing to the

hidden channel by which the tale reached Western Europe.

5. As in the _Miraj_, Mahomet was accompanied by Gabriel, so St. Paul in

his nocturnal ascension is led by the Archangel Michael.

The first torture of hell witnessed by St. Paul—that of the avaricious,

hanging by their feet, their tongues, or ears from the branches of

trees—is evidently an adaptation from the Isra; and it must be confessed

that in the Moslem story there exists a relation between the sin

committed and the member tortured that is altogether lacking in the

Christian legend.

Over a turbid river, in the Pauline vision, stretches a bridge _as

fine as a hair_, connecting this world with paradise; this bridge the

righteous souls cross with ease, but the wicked fall into the river. Here

the plagiarism is flagrant; for this is clearly a copy of the “sirat”

or Moslem bridge crossed on the Day of Judgment, according to a Koranic

myth, the Persian origin of which has been explained above.[438] Indeed,

one of the early traditionists, Abu Said al-Khadari, in describing the

“sirat” as being _finer than a hair_, uses the very same simile as the

author of the Pauline vision.[439] It need hardly be pointed out that the

position of this bridge, stretching from the earth to heaven across hell,

is the same in both Christian and Moslem legends.

A wheel of fire that in ceaseless rotation torments the sinners is

another instance of a torture copied from Islam. It will be remembered

that in several _hadiths_ a precedent was found for the torture

appointed by Dante to Sodomites[440]; among them is one dating from the

eighth century that says, “In hell there are people bound to flaming

wheels, the wheels of wells that turn in ceaseless rotation.”[441]

6. Although other picturesque features may be passed over as of minor

importance,[442] the end of this apocryphal vision is remarkable for

two scenes of singular poetic beauty. In the first of these, St. Paul

from hell sees angels leading a righteous soul to paradise, while demons

drag off a wicked soul to torture. All the religious books of Islam

devote a chapter to this subject. Thus, the author of the _Tadhkira_

comments at length on a _hadith_, in which the death of the righteous

man is contrasted with that of the sinner; and the fate of their souls,

as they are led by angels or demons to heaven or hell, is depicted in

awe-inspiring scenes.[443] But, as this scene of the Pauline vision

recurs in many other Christian legends, all bearing upon the same

struggle between angels and devils for the possession of the soul, its

study may be held over until later, when these particular legends will be

dealt with in detail.

The final vision of St. Paul is summarised by D’Ancona as follows:

The sinners humbly beg the Apostle to intercede on their

behalf. The _Miserere_, uttered by millions of souls, fills the

four heavens and reaches to the throne of Christ, Who thereupon

descends and sternly rebukes the reprobates. For the sake of

His disciple, however, He grants them a weekly respite from

torture, from the ninth hour of Saturday to the first hour of

Monday.

In the summary of the Greek Apocalypse, given by Graf, the analogous

scene is as follows:

The Archangel Gabriel descends with the heavenly hosts, and the

damned implore his assistance. St. Paul, who has wept over

the indescribable tortures he has just witnessed, joins the

angels in their intercession on behalf of the sufferers. Christ

appears and, moved to pity by their prayers, grants the sinners

an annual respite on Easter Sunday, the anniversary of His

resurrection.[444]

Graf has pointed out that the main difference between the Greek

Apocalypse and the Western _Visio Pauli_ lies in the fact that, whereas

in the former the respite from torture is annual, in the latter it is

weekly.[445] When and by whom was this change introduced? Islamic legends

prior to the _Visio latina_ show the same belief in a weekly day of rest

for the damned, extending from the eve of Friday to the morn of Saturday.

The point will be more fully dealt with when the cycle of Christian

legends on this subject of a respite comes under discussion. Meanwhile,

the conclusion to be drawn is, that the _Visio Pauli_ reached Western

Europe through Moslem adaptations of the Greek Apocalypse. A brief survey

of these Islamic legends will complete the comparison.

One, current in the ninth century, forms but a new episode in the legend

of Mahomet’s ascension.[446]

Mahomet from heaven hears the cries of pain uttered by the

undutiful children in hell and, moved to pity, intercedes with

God on their behalf; but God refuses to grant his request,

unless the parents join him in his prayers. After witnessing

the torture of the children, Mahomet returns weeping to the

Throne of God and thrice repeats his entreaties, only to meet

with the same answer. The Prophet then appeals in pleading

tones to the parents, who are in heaven; but they, remembering

the ingratitude of their children, are loth to act. However,

in the end he succeeds in softening their hearts and obtains

permission to lead them to hell, where at the sight of their

tortured children they burst into bitter tears. The sinners

reply with cries for mercy, and the entreaties of the parents,

added to those of the Prophet, finally obtain the pardon of the

sinners.

A similar legend, telling of the delivery from hell of the Moslem

sufferers through the intercession of the Prophet, is given in the

_Tadhkira_.[447]

From the bottommost pit of hell the damned, with cries of

anguish, call on Mahomet to intercede on behalf of his flock.

At the same time they beg the Lord to forgive them their sins,

addressing Him in terms similar to those of the _Miserere_ of

the Pauline vision, “Have mercy upon us, O Lord!” God grants

their pardon and sends Gabriel to deliver the believers from

hell.

III

LEGENDS OF VISIONS OF HELL—_continued_

1. _Legend of Tundal._[448]—As the protagonist lived in 1149, there is no

doubt that this legend dates from the second half of the twelfth century.

The author of the Latin version, an Irish monk, states that he composed

it from a text written in a barbarous tongue.[449] Was this an Arabic

text? The great number of Moslem features, several of them very striking,

would seem to suggest it.

The legend tells of a journey, undertaken by the soul of Tundal upon his

apparent death, to the realms beyond the grave, and describes many scenes

the Moslem origin of which has already been sufficiently proved—the

tortures by fire, by intense cold, and by the fiends wielding red hot

prongs; the river of sulphur, the narrow bridge that only the righteous

succeed in crossing, and many others.

2. But there are other more interesting visions. Thus, at the further

side of the bridge of hell is a monster, named Acheronte, which, with its

mighty jaws opening wide, is seen devouring two sinners. The literary

device whereby hell is represented as a monstrous fiend rather than as

a place of torture is to be found in Islam many centuries earlier.

The Moslem _hadiths_ on the final judgment describe a monster, called

Gehenna, which, according to some versions, with its many mouths devours

three sinners.[450]

Tundal further tells of a place of expiation for souls that, being

neither good nor wicked, are spared the torments of hell, but are not

worthy of association with the saints. The prototype of this region has

been shown to be the Moslem Aaraf.[451]

In another part of hell Tundal sees demons, who with heavy hammers deal

furious blows at sinners stretched upon anvils. This vision is evidently

an adaptation of the Moslem scene of the _punishment in the grave_.[452]

Two demons, black and of sinister and repulsive mien, appear

before the sinner as soon as he is buried. So misshapen are

they that they cannot be likened to angels, men, or animals. In

his hands each bears, for the purpose of Divine vengeance, an

iron hammer, so heavy that not all the men in the world could

lift it. In thunderous tones they begin to question the soul on

the sincerity of his belief in God and the Prophet. Paralysed

with terror at the sight of the monsters, whose eyes flash

like lightning in the darkness of the grave, the sinner is too

conscious of his guilt to give a ready reply to the fiends, who

at each faltering answer bring down their hammers with terrific

force seven times alternately upon the wretch’s head.

The picture is so vivid that the story must undoubtedly have created a

profound impression; and, indeed, it is to be found in an adapted form in

many a mediæval legend. Thus, the tale of Hugh, Margrave of Brandenburg,

tells how, when hunting in a wood, he came across some men of a black

colour and deformed shape torturing souls by beating them with hammers

as they lay stretched on anvils.[453] This picture agrees even more

literally with the Islamic model than does the scene in the legend of

Tundal.

3. There remain three episodes that unquestionably are copies of Islamic

descriptions. These are the very three scenes that prompted D’Ancona to

remark,[454] “Never perhaps has man shown such wealth of imagination

in the invention of infernal tortures as did the anonymous monk that

composed this legend”—a remark that the eminent critic would surely not

have hazarded, had he known of the existence of the Moslem originals. The

first of these scenes depicts Lucifer.

Surrounded by demons and chained to a red hot grill, he roars

in agony; and, as if seeking vengeance for his own suffering,

with his hundred hands he clutches at innumerable souls and

crushes them between his fingers even as a man would crush

a bunch of grapes. The mangled bodies are then to be seen

floating in the fiery vapour of his breath, alternately

attracted and repelled by the respiration of the monster.

The posture of Lucifer, chained down amidst his fiendish host, is a

Moslem feature that has already been referred to.[455]

The idea of the alternate attraction and repulsion of the bodies by his

breathing appears to be taken from the scene of the _Isra_ in which the

bodies of the adulterers are shown floating up and down in the heat of

the furnace. The most striking feature—that of Lucifer crushing the

bodies of the sinners in his numerous hands—is modelled upon a _hadith_

of the eighth century, which reads as follows:

“God has created an angel with as many fingers as there are

sinners condemned to fire, and each sinner is tortured by a

finger. I swear by Allah that the firmament would melt with

heat, were that angel to place but one of his fingers upon

it!”[456]

4. The second episode is prefaced by D’Ancona with the following remark:

“The sole aim of the legend of Tundal is to provoke terror. With a

refinement of torture truly mediæval, the souls of the damned are first

taken to see the delights of the life led by the elect, in order that

their suffering be all the greater: _ut magis doleant_.”[457]

This pathetic scene is frequently to be found in the religious works of

Islam. According to the Moslem creed, identical on this point with the

Christian, the moral suffering of sinners is intended to be far greater

than their physical suffering. Algazel develops this theme in his _Ihia_.

The grief of the sinners over their exclusion from heaven, he avers,

would not be so intense were it not that God, to add to their punishment,

has ordered them to be shown paradise from outside.[458] In proof, he

quotes the following _hadith_:

On the day of judgment God will ordain that some of the damned

be led to heaven; but, when they are near enough to inhale the

delicious perfumes with which the air is laden, and behold the

castles of paradise and the delights awaiting the blessed, a

Voice will of a sudden be heard saying: “Withdraw them, for

they are unworthy of a place in heaven”; and as they are turned

away, they will be filled with a sorrow such as no one yet has

felt or ever will feel. Then will they cry out, “Oh, Lord!

Hadst Thou but cast us into hell without showing us the rewards

prepared for Thy chosen, it had been easier for us to bear our

torment”; and God will answer, “To-day shall ye taste the pain

of torture, ye to whom I have denied the prize.”[459]

This scene, in which cruelty is blended with sarcasm, shows no trace of

the sweet message of pity preached by the Gospel, but rather breathes the

spirit of vengeance that is characteristic of the Old Testament and is

transparent in more than one passage of the Koran. Some of these passages

are glossed in the _Tadhkira_ with other _hadiths_, attributed to the

converted Jew, Kaab al-Akhbar, describing various practical jokes played

upon the sinners. Thus, the gates of hell are opened, as if to let the

sufferers escape, to be quickly closed again whenever an attempt is made

to pass through them; or, a pretence is made of allowing the sinners to

enter paradise, the gate of which is then slammed in their faces. Under

the heading of “Tricks played upon the Damned,” these cruel hoaxes prove

that the comic and grotesque element found in many of the pre-Dante

Christian legends was not wanting in the tales of Islam.

5. The last episode in the legend of Tundal that may be said to be of

Moslem origin forms a striking picture:

The protagonist confesses to having stolen a cow from a

fellow-priest and, as a punishment, his angel-guide obliges him

to cross the narrow bridge leading to paradise at the same time

warding off the attacks of that very cow.

D’Ancona points out a similar scene in the vision of the usurer

Gottschalk, in which the Burgrave of Reiningen is condemned to be tossed

and trampled upon by a mad cow, of which he had once robbed a poor

widow.[460]

The episode appears to be a copy of an early Moslem _hadith_:

“I swear by Him in whose hands lies my soul that every owner of

a sheep, a cow, or a camel, who has omitted to pay the ritual

tax, will be confronted on the day of judgment by the animal

in the fiercest form it ever assumed on earth; it will gore

him with horns of fire and trample upon him until his ribs are

broken and his belly split in twain; in vain will he cry out

for help, for in the form of a wolf or a lion the beast will

continue to torment him in hell.”[461]

6. _Legend of Purgatory of St. Patrick._[462]—This legend appeared in

Ireland in the second half of the twelfth century and rapidly became

popular throughout Christendom. Calderon immortalised it in his drama

of the same title, and there is hardly a nation in Western Europe that

has not drawn upon the legend for some literary purpose or other. The

theme is a journey to the realms of the after-world by one Owen, an

Irish knight, who is bold enough to penetrate into the cave by which,

according to tradition, St. Patrick communicated with the other world.

As D’Ancona observes, the legend is not remarkable for originality.

“The visionaries,” he says, “begin to copy one another, and this is but

natural, seeing that their imaginative powers have become exhausted.” The

remark is very true and applies exactly to the present thesis; for most,

if not all, of the picturesque features of this legend existed in Moslem

eschatology.

7. Thus, Moslem models exist for the following scenes, common to so many

of the legends: the torture by serpents; the submersion of sinners in

a river of molten metal, on the banks of which stand demons ready to

harpoon them; the passage of the narrow and slippery bridge; the monster

whose breath alternately attracts and repels the bodies of the sinners;

the wheel of fire; the pit of sulphur; the sinners hanging by their

eyelids or nostrils, or head downwards, over flames of sulphur.

Other features of greater interest also appear to be of Islamic origin.

Thus, the sinners lying crucified to the ground existed, as was shown in

connection with Dante’s picture of Caiaphas, in the Moslem hell.[463]

The blast of bitterly cold wind to which other sinners are exposed, is

but the _zamharir_ of Islam in one of its accepted meanings.[464]

Finally, the burning sepulchres in which some of the sinners lie buried,

and the garments of fire covering others, have been shown to be of

Islamic origin.[465]

IV

LEGENDS OF VISIONS OF HELL (CONCLUSION)

1. _Vision of Alberic._[466]—This legend is here included, not because

the scenes depicted in it are in any way original, but because ever since

the first publication of the Latin text in 1824 by the Abbé Cancellieri

the Dantists have considered it to be one of the most important

precursors of the Divine Comedy. Like the vision of St. Patrick, it dates

from the thirteenth century, but was written in Italy, at the monastery

of Montecasino. The monk, Alberic, is the protagonist and narrator of

this journey to the realms of the after-life, which he is represented as

having made in his childhood while unconscious during an illness.

The main episodes of the vision are those that have repeatedly been

shown to be of Moslem origin. Thus, the lascivious are punished by being

submerged in ice; apostates are shown devoured by serpents; murderers lie

in the traditional lake of boiling blood; wicked mothers hang by their

breasts from hooks, while adulteresses hang over fires. Then there is the

scene of the monster whose breathing attracts and repels bodies, and that

of Lucifer bound with heavy chains in a deep pit in the centre of hell.

Finally, we have the most common scene of all, the narrow bridge that

leads to heaven.

2. _The Song of the Sun in the Edda._—Among the forerunners of the

Divine Comedy, Ozanam includes the famous Solar Liod contained in the

Edda Saemundar.[467] Remote as the origin of these tales may be, the

Solar Liod itself does not seem to be much older than the eleventh

century. Ozanam himself observes that the poet depicts the realms of

the after-life in a manner differing from the pagan traditions of his

country. Moreover, the picture contains three distinctly Moslem features.

In the first place, the lower world is divided into seven regions, as in

the Islamic tales. Secondly, the souls in hell are represented as birds

whose plumage is blackened by smoke. Now, just as in the discussion

of the legend of St. Macarius it was shown to be a common feature of

Moslem tales to depict the souls of the righteous as incarnate in birds

of white or green plumage, so in a later chapter it will be shown that

the incarnation of the souls of the wicked in birds of black plumage is

an idea also prevalent in Islam. Lastly, the author of the Solar Liod

depicts thieves as moving in groups in hell, laden with burdens of lead.

Surely this scene also is derived from a Moslem _hadith_, which says: “On

the day of judgment the rich man who failed to serve God shall be obliged

to carry his riches on his back and at the passage of the bridge he

shall stagger under his burden.”[468]

3. _Vision of Turcill._—This thirteenth-century vision contains, in

addition to many Moslem features common to other legends, the scene in

which a lawyer is forced to swallow his illicit gains.[469] The ninth

century legend of Wettin showed the powerful of this world similarly

expiating their crimes of rapine.[470] But this striking punishment was

found in the _Isra_, where at one stage the faithless guardians and

usurers are tortured by having stones of fire and darts of iron, symbolic

of their ill-gotten gains, thrust down their throats, and in another

scene lie helpless on the ground, their bellies swollen with the proceeds

of their usury. The great age of the _hadiths_ relating this torture is

confirmed by Tabari in his ninth century commentary.[471]

4. _Vision of the Abbot Joachim._—This twelfth-century vision contains

the scene, so common in Moslem _hadiths_, of the narrow and slippery

bridge leading across a river of burning sulphur that runs through hell.

The souls of the righteous cross this bridge _with the swiftness of an

eagle_.[472] The same simile occurs in a _hadith_ which reads: “Some

will cross the bridge with the speed of lightning, others like the wind,

_others again like birds_.”[473]

At the farther side of the bridge rises a wall, upon which the garden of

paradise is built. This picture appears to be a copy of the Aaraf, which

is represented in the Koran as a garden and a wall rising between hell

and paradise.[474]

5. _Vision of the Bard of Regio Emilia._—This is an apocalyptic treatise

composed in the thirteenth century in verse and in the vulgar dialect.

Vossler states that it is difficult to understand how a nameless

travelling minstrel could by his own unaided efforts have conceived

so clear and comparatively logical a system of the after-world; and

this very symmetry leads the critic to attach prime importance to this

vision as being a prototype of Dante’s conception.[475] The troubadour

imagines hell as divided into eight regions, each of which has a name and

distinctive features of its own.

The first, called Ago, is full of fire; the second, Tartaro,

is the region of discord; the third, Averno, of cruelty; the

fourth, Asiro, of evil memories; the fifth, Gena, is a region

of sulphur; the sixth, Grabasso, is a place of trial; the

seventh, Baratro, is characterised by depth; and the eighth,

Abisso, is full of fiery furnaces and boiling pitch. The total

circumference exceeds a thousand miles. Access is afforded by

means of ten gates lying a hundred miles apart; each gate has

its special features and is reserved for one particular class

of sinners. Mountains, rivers and lakes of fire are seen at

the entrance. The first gate is called the Gate of Tears, and

the others are the Gates of Pain, Terror, Chains, Sulphur,

Serpents, Thirst, and so forth.

6. The comparison made in a former chapter of the symmetric plan of

Dante’s hell with its Moslem prototypes shows how little originality

exists in the conception of the Italian troubadour.[476] The two meanings

of _storey_ and _gate_, given in Moslem exegesis to the Koranic word

_bab_, he placidly accepts and simply adapts his facts to the double

interpretation by representing hell as having ten gates besides eight

regions or storeys. The same solution finally predominated among the

Sufis, for the Murcian Ibn Arabi imagined hell as having seven strata and

seven gates. The dimensions of hell are stated with similar precision,

though with greater hyperbole, in the _hadiths_, which fix the distance

between the gates as equal to what a man might cover on foot in seventy

years.[477] Again, according to some _hadiths_, there are mountains and

rivers of fire at the entrance to hell.[478] Lastly, it has repeatedly

been shown that each stage of the Moslem hell had a name and special

features of its own and was reserved for one category of sinners. Indeed,

to judge by the names, the bard of Regio Emilia may well be suspected of

having availed himself of the _hadith_ of Ibn Jurayj.[479] For, having

exhausted his stock of classical and Biblical names with Tartaro, Averno,

Baratro and Abisso, he seems to have resorted to transcribing roughly

the Arabic terms. Thus, while Ago appears to be derived from Haguia,

Asiro is clearly copied from Asair, and Gena from Gehenam.[480]

V

LEGENDS ON THE WEIGHING OF SOULS

1. Throughout a whole cycle of legends, which D’Ancona groups with the

political legends, there recurs a scene the immediate, though not remote,

origin of which is Islamic. The protagonists of these legends are the

Emperors Charlemagne and Henry III., and King Rudolph of Burgundy.

These princes are brought up before the Divine tribunal, and

their sins are cast on to the balance by demons; but, just as

the scale is about to sink under the heavy weight, a saint,

such as St. James, St. Denis or St. Lawrence, throws on the

other scale all the good deeds of the prince, the sanctuaries

he erected, the ornaments he presented to churches and abbeys,

and so on. These outweigh the sins, and the soul is saved from

hell.[481]

2. That the religious myth of the weighing of the souls on scales at

Divine judgment had its early origin in Egypt is well known.[482] The

myth reappeared in the Persian eschatology of the Avesta,[483] and it

had penetrated into Arabia by Mahomet’s time, as is shown, among other

passages, by Ch. XXI, 48, of the Koran: “We shall set up true scales on

the Day of Judgment. No soul shall be unjustly dealt with, though the

works to be judged should weigh no more than a grain of mustard seed.”

The traditionists, needless to say, soon seized upon the theme and

adorned it with realistic scenes, some of which are identical with those

of the Christian legends.[484]

A Moslem is brought up before the Divine tribunal on the Day

of Judgment. His sins, recorded in ninety-nine books, are read

out to him and, after he has confessed, the books are placed

on one of the scales, which naturally falls; whereupon God

Himself places on the other scale a scrap of paper containing

the profession of faith made by the sinner in his lifetime. The

scales are turned, and the Moslem is saved. According to other

legends Mahomet intervenes by placing on the right hand scale

a scrap of paper representing the prayers addressed to him

by the sinner. Often the realistic effect is enhanced by the

substitution of objects for the pieces of paper. Thus, a small

bag containing a handful of earth, which the sinner once threw

on the grave of a fellow-man that his soul might have peace,

alone suffices to outweigh a heap of sins. In many legends the

sinners are shown co-operating towards their mutual salvation:

Those rich in virtue assist their needy brethren by lending

them their surplus merits; and often the anxious sinner is to

be seen threading his way through the groups of souls in search

of a friend who can oblige him with the one virtue he may lack,

by the weight of which he hopes to turn the balance in his

favour.

As it is inconceivable that in that obscure age Western Christianity

should have had direct knowledge of the Egypto-Persian myth, the

immediate origin of the Christian legends must be sought for in the

Islamic tales. This hypothesis is confirmed by the fact that in both the

_hadiths_ and the Christian legends the same _Deus ex machina_ effect is

introduced.

3. The same explanation may throw light upon a point in mediæval art that

has hitherto remained obscure. Mâle, in his work “L’art religieux du

XIIIme siècle en France,” calls attention to the fact that in the porches

of the Gothic cathedrals of France St. Michael is represented with scales

in his hand weighing the good and evil deeds of men.[485] Apart from a

few vague phrases of St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom to the effect

that the deeds of men will be weighed “as in a balance,” Mâle finds no

authority for this scene and concludes, that the image must have been

formed in the popular mind by spontaneous evolution from those allusions

of the Saints, and may thus have reached the artists.

A more specific explanation is provided by the effect of Moslem influence

in producing legends in Christianity similar to those existing in Islam.

In the Bible and in Christian doctrine generally, St. Michael is the

_princeps militiae coelestis_, and as such he is represented, clad in

armour, in early mediæval monuments, notably in an eighth-century window

of the Cathedral of Châlons-sur-Marne. In paintings and bas-reliefs of

a later date, however, as in Van der Weyden’s Day of Judgment in the

Hospital of Beaune, and in that of Memling at Dantzig, he is always

shown with the scales in his hand. The inference to be drawn is that the

myth of the scales was introduced in the ninth or tenth century and,

in the course of adaptation, the Archangel Gabriel (who in Islam was

entrusted with the weighing) was replaced by the Archangel St. Michael,

one of whose functions indeed, according to the doctrine of the Church

is to lead the souls of the deceased to the Divine throne and introduce

them into heaven.[486] This adaptation was not only unauthorised by the

Catholic Church, but condemned by learned religious critics. Thus, the

seventeenth century Spanish friar, Interián de Ayala, in his work “El

pintor cristiano y erudito,” says: “It will appear even stranger to see

the Archangel Michael himself depicted with scales in his hand; the

origin of this, I must frankly confess, is unknown to me.”[487]

4. Nor is this instance of the influence of Islam upon mediæval art by

any means exceptional. Both Mâle and Friar Interián point out other

scenes of the day of judgment as equally unauthorised by Catholic

tradition,[488] and notably the scene of intercession. In the sculpture

of several French cathedrals of the thirteenth century; in the fourteenth

century Day of Judgment at the Campo Santo of Pisa; in that of Fra

Angelico at the Academy of Florence belonging to the fifteenth century—in

all the Virgin Mary is shown, either alone or accompanied by St. John the

Baptist, kneeling at the throne of Christ, the Judge, and interceding for

the sinners. The scene is, of course, quite contrary to the spirit of

that day of wrath, when there shall be neither intercession nor pardon.

With the Moslem creed, however, it is in perfect agreement. Algazel—to

quote the highest authority only—states that, after the Moslem sinners

have been sentenced, God in His mercy will hearken to the pleading of the

prophets and saints that stand highest in His favour.[489] As evidence he

adduces many passages in the Koran and _hadiths_ of the Prophet, in which

the scene is described in picturesque detail.

Mahomet, the leader of the prophets, draws nigh to the seat of

the Divine Judge casting, as he passes, a look of compassion

on the unhappy throng of Moslem sinners. In vain have the

other prophets interceded for them; their sole hope now lies

with him. Moved to pity by their entreaties and at the special

request of Jesus, he prostrates himself before the throne of

God and obtains the desired pardon.[490]

Lastly, the scenes in mediæval and renaissance pictures of the day of

judgment in which the sinners are shown coming to life again naked, are

denounced by Friar Interián as shameless and unchristian.[491] Those

scenes, though indeed lacking all authority of the Church, are strictly

in accordance with Moslem doctrine, which categorically states that on

the day of judgment all men will meet before the throne of God naked and

uncircumcised.[492] In fact, their very nakedness is a cause of physical

suffering; for, as the sun will on that day draw nearer to the earth,

they will sweat exceedingly and suffer greatly from thirst. This detail

was even objected to by the early Moslems, and Aysha, the Prophet’s wife,

pointed out how unseemly was such promiscuous nakedness. But Mahomet

replied:

“Oh, Aysha! On that dread day none will bethink himself of

casting eyes upon his neighbour, for each one will be intent

upon his own thoughts.”[493]

Nevertheless, _hadiths_ of a later date sought to lessen the crudeness of

the scene by reserving such nakedness to infidels.[494]

VI

LEGENDS OF PARADISE

1. D’Ancona paid due heed to the materialism shown in the conceptions

of paradise in almost all the Christian legends precursory of the

Divine Comedy, and concluded that Dante, in tracing his spiritual and

ethereal picture of paradise, was uninfluenced by those legends. The

contrast between Dante and his Christian predecessors was referred to

in the discussion of the Paradiso,[495] when it was suggested that the

materialistic pictures of heaven appearing in the mediæval Christian

legends were themselves based on Moslem models. Now is the occasion to

prove that assertion.

To begin with, these Christian legends bear a general resemblance to the

Moslem tales in that they often make no distinction between the earthly

and the heavenly paradise.[496] This confusion, it will be remembered, is

characteristic of Islamic stories, and particularly of some versions of

the ascension of Mahomet. In these, a garden of bliss, watered by clear

streams, is the scene of the theological paradise, which, although not

specifically laid on earth, is not supposed to be in the firmament of the

heavens.[497]

This Moslem conception of paradise as a garden reappears in some poetical

legends of thirteenth-century Christian Europe. For instance, in the

poem “Le vergier du paradis,” published by Jubinal,[498] paradise is

represented as a garden watered by limpid streams and shaded by trees;

the air is scented with rare perfumes and the sweet music of instruments

and the song of birds enchant the ear; within the bowers of this garden

are castles of marvellous beauty, built of gold and precious stones. Were

it not for some exclusively Islamic features, the picture might indeed

have been evolved from the Celestial Jerusalem of Revelations.[499] Some

of these features are of interest.

2. The protagonist of the legend of Turcill, in passing through

the garden of paradise, sees Adam seated at the foot of a

miraculous tree, close to the source of the four Biblical

rivers.[500] He observes that “Adam appeared to be smiling with

one eye, and weeping with the other; smiling at the thought

of those of his descendants who would find eternal life, and

weeping at the thought of those destined to eternal damnation.”

This episode, for which Graf quotes no precedent, is undeniably based

upon a scene in the ascension of Mahomet[501]; and the fact that the

version in question is included in the collection of Bukhari and Muslim

is proof that it was current in Islam before the ninth century.

3. But, apart from mere episode, in many Christian legends of paradise

the general outline of the conception is of Moslem origin. This

conception is mostly modelled upon one type; paradise is conceived as

the court of a feudal lord who receives his retainers at a brilliant

gathering enlivened by music and dancing. The _Cour du paradis_, the

work of an anonymous Provençal troubadour of the thirteenth century,

describes the reception as follows[502]:

On All Saints Day the Lord holds a festive meeting at His

court. St. Simon and St. Jude are sent to each dwelling in

paradise to invite the blessed to the party; they call in turn

at the mansions of the angels, the patriarchs, the apostles,

the martyrs, the confessors, the innocent children, the virgins

and the widows. In these groups the blessed flock to the

reception, where they sing songs of heavenly love and tread the

same measures as are danced on earth; Mary and Mary Magdalene

lead the singing and dancing.

The _Visione dei gaudii de’ santi_,[503] a legend of Dante’s time,

depicts the blessed as barons and paradise as a feudal castle with

battlements and towers of crystal and precious stones. This picture is

reproduced in the poem of the minstrel Giacomino of Verona, in which

the saints are represented as knights militant under the banner of the

Virgin, who in reward crowns them with wreaths of flowers of a perfume

sweeter than musk or amber, and bestows upon them precious gifts of

harness set with gold and emeralds and of chargers swifter than the hart

or the wind chasing over the sea.[504]

In other legends, the festival in paradise is conceived on less worldly

lines, more as a religious ceremony; in place of the cavalcade of knights

is a holy procession led by the Lord, and then follows a meeting, at

which St. Stephen recites the Epistle, and St. John the Gospel.[505]

It is significant that long before the tenth century there existed in

Islam a whole cycle of _hadiths_ the very title of which—“The Court of

Holiness”—suggests a resemblance to the Christian legends. As a matter of

fact, the same general ideas underlie both. Paradise is conceived either

as a courtly gathering where there is music and dancing, or, again, as

a religious festival. The likeness extends down to actual detail, which

would seem to be undeniable evidence of imitation.

This cycle of _hadiths_ comprises, not only those legends upon which the

Beatific Vision of the mystics was founded, but others created by the

traditionists to satisfy the ruder tastes of the early Moslems, whose

only interests ever lay in the direction of the miraculous.[506]

The _hadiths_ of the “Court of Holiness” begin, like the Christian

legends, with the invitation of the blessed to the reception at the

heavenly court. The invitation is for Friday, the festive day of Islam,

on which the elect, in addition to their continual bliss, are granted

the special favour of gazing upon the face of the Almighty. Thus the

enjoyment of the Beatific Vision is not constant, but weekly; and in the

“Cour du Paradis” the blessed only behold the Almighty once a year. The

point is important in that it is quite unauthorised by Christian doctrine.

Early on Friday morn angel messengers call upon the blessed in

their mansions and deliver a sealed invitation to each together

with rich gifts of jewelry for his adornment. The reception is

held in two castles, built of pearls, that stand in the gardens

of paradise—the one destined for the men, under Mahomet, and

the other for the women, under Fatima. Reclining on soft

cushions, the guests listen to houris chanting hymns of praise

to the Lord to the accompaniment of countless flutes that hang

from the trees and are sounded by the softest of breezes.

Enraptured by the music, the blessed feel an impulse to dance;

so, in order that they may be spared the physical exertion,

they are provided with instruments fitted with wings, on which

they sway hither and thither to the rhythm of the music. After

the dancing follows the reception by God, Who speaks to each

guest in turn, whereupon they retire each to his dwelling.

The analogy of this version to the “Cour du Paradis” is obvious. In other

versions, the reception is followed by a religious ceremony.

The blessed beg to be allowed the pleasure of holy prayer,

which was their delight on earth. God bids David ascend the

pulpit, and in an inspired voice he chants one of his Psalms.

Thereupon Mahomet in even more impressive tones recites a

chapter from the Koran. Finally God shows Himself to each of

the guests, who then retire to their mansions.

A third version of the _hadith_ appears to be the prototype of the

Christian legends that represent the heavenly festivity as a brilliant

cavalcade. After the prologue of the invitation common to all the

readings, the story proceeds as follows:

After all the guests have mounted, the men on horses of the

purest breed and the women on she-camels, they are led by

Mahomet and Fatima to the court. Mahomet, mounted on Boraq,

hoists the Green Standard of the Glory of God, which is borne

by angels on a staff of light above his head. The prophets

Adam, Moses, and Jesus join the procession, as it passes their

castles. In other versions, Mahomet is surrounded by Abu Bakr,

Adam, and Omar and preceded by the first muezzin Bilal, who

rides at the head of the heavenly muezzins. The cavalcade

follows the flowery banks of the river Kauthar till it reaches

the golden walls of the castle of the King of Heaven. Gabriel

climbs to the battlements and summons all the blessed to join

in the festivity. They arrive in groups led by their respective

prophets and take up their place behind Mahomet and his flock.

Inside the castle walls the sward is perfumed and shaded by

trees, whose branches are laden with fruit and peopled with

countless birds of song. Here the reception is held in a manner

similar to that already described.

The resemblance between this version and the Christian legends of the

cavalcade of knights extends even to descriptive detail. Mary presents

her knights with coursers such as never were seen on earth, red in

colour, and swifter than the hart or the wind sweeping over the sea;

their trappings are of gold resplendent with emeralds. The terms of the

Moslem legend are almost identical:

God saith to His angels, “Give My elect steeds of the purest

breed, yet such as they have never ridden.” And the angels

proffered them coursers of a ruby red, the trappings of which

are set with emeralds; with their wings of gold and hoofs of

silver, they can outrun the swiftest race-horse and fly faster

than lightning....[507]

VII

LEGENDS OF SEA VOYAGES