The Canticle of the Creatures as Hypotext behind Dante ’ s Pater Noster

The article analyses Dante’s explanatory paraphrase and exegesis of the Lord’s Prayer, which opens the eleventh canto (v. 1–24) of Purgatory. The author reminds us that the prayer is the only one fully recited in the entire Comedy and this devotional practice is in line with the Franciscan prescription to recite it in the sixth hour of the Divine Office when Christ died on the cross. The prayer is reported by the poet on the first terrace of Purgatory, where the proud and vainglorious must learn the virtue of humility, and therefore it symbolizes the perfect reciprocity between man and Godhead. Dante collates and amplifies the two complementary Latin versions of the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6: 9–13 and Luke 11: 2–4. The two synoptic texts are supplemented by the Gospel of John, from which Dante takes the concept of celestial bread (manna) – the flesh and the blood of Christ – which nourishes, liberates and sanctifies Christians. Apart from the Bible, Dante also draws upon the Augustinian and Tomistic traditions. However, the main hypotext behind the prayer, which is neither cited nor acknowledged in any explicit form in the Comedy, is the Franciscan Laudes creaturarum (“Canticle of the Creatures”), also known as the Canticle of the Brother Sun. Written in vernacular by St. Francis himself, Rocznik Filozoficzny Ignatianum The Ignatianum Philosophical Yearbook Vol. 26, No. 2 (2020), s. 19–40

who is also the author of the Expositio in Pater noster, the Canticle was still recited and sung together with the Lord's Prayer in the Franciscan communities in Dante's time. Moreover, following the parallel readings popular nowadays in Dante studies, the author argues that Purgatorio 11 may be elucidated in the context of Paradiso 11, which is the Franciscan canto par excellence, and taken together they both offset cantos 10, 11, 12 of Inferno, which are based on the sin of pride (superbia). The denunciation of pride in and around canto 11 of Inferno alludes to humility -the remedy of such pride in Purgatory 11, which in turn prepares the reader for the encounter with St. Francis -the paragon of humility -in Paradiso 11. The author concludes that the Dantean paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer is no less than an elaborate exegesis and homage to Christ and His teachings, something which is encompassed in a nutshell in the Sermon on the Mount.

Initium omnis peccati superbia
Entering the first terrace of Purgatory proper, where those guilty of vainglory and pride are punished by carrying stone weights on their backs which force them to bend and keep their eyes firmly fixed on the ground, the eleventh canto opens as part of a triptych with a vernacularisation and amplification, a veritable rewording and exegesis cum glossa, if you will, of the Lord's Prayer: O Padre nostro, che ne' cieli stai, non circunscritto, ma per piú amore ch'ai primi effetti di là sú tu hai, 3 laudato sia 'l tuo nome e 'l tuo valore da ogne creatura, com' è degno di render grazie al tuo dolce vapore. 6 Vegna ver' noi la pace del tuo regno, ché noi ad essa non potem da noi, s' ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno. 9 Come del suo voler li angeli tuoi fan sacrificio a te, cantando osanna, cosí facciano li uomini de' suoi.
18 Nostra virtú che di legger s'adona, non spermentar con l'antico avversaro, ma libera da lui che sí la sprona. 21 Quest'ultima preghiera, segnor caro, già non si fa per noi, ché non bisogna, ma per color che dietro a noi restaro 1 . 24 This is the longest (and indeed only) prayer fully volgarizzata and recited in the entire Comedy 2 and it would seem to be perfectly in line with the Franciscan prescription for lay persons to recite the Pater noster in the hora sexta, the sixth hour of the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours 3 when Christ had died on the Cross 4 . One of the most striking constituent features is the play between the deictic elements Tu: noi (You: us) and derivatives 5 . The seven occurrences of noi are offset by the three occurrences of tu, similarly between the four occurrences of forms of the possessive adjective nostro against the five occurrences of tuo, all highlighted by the exquisitely Roman use of the possessive suo for both the angels (at v. 10) and the men (at v. 12). The obvious lesson that the proud souls on the first terrace must learn by singing this prayer over and over again is encapsulated in lines 8 & 9: "non potem da noi […] nostro ingegno" 6 . That is to say, the peace of the divine Kingdom that God may possibly instill in their eschatological existence cannot be wrought by the ingenuity alone that they had displayed on earth in their respective fields, no matter how great they think that ingenuity had actually been.
While it is proper that both angels and men offer themselves in holocaust to God, that is, sacrifice Self to Him -"fan sacrificio a te" -we must also notice that Dante uses the osanna not only to rhyme with and therefore highlight the cotidiana manna two lines later (duly discussed infra), but also to complete the syzygy, this perfect balance and relationship between man and Godhead. In other words, while the former should gladly sacrifice himself to the latter, it is the Father who should be persuaded to save him. The Hebrew word Hosanna used exclusively in the New Testament 7 , as Dante knows all too well thanks to Jerome, though often banalised as an almost meaningless interjection, literally describes that crying out to God, the imperative beseeching Him to save the faithful: of exile and the Comedy, to do time himself on precisely this terrace 9 , Dante, the otherworldy proud pilgrim, would ineluctably learn in the Franciscan Heaven of the Moon in Paradiso that humbling one's personal pride, daring 'to want what God wants' , is precisely what brings about peace and salvation 10 . Here in Purgatory, however, he is already learning that it is man's place to sacrifice himself, God's, perhaps, to save.
What is equally striking, of course, is the series of New Testament sources behind Dante's choice of language. Though obviously in the shadow of doubt as to which particular version of the Bible Dante and late-Duecento Florence actually heeded, that is, whether or not it contained the apocryphal Gospel according to Nicodemus, to which specific branch or branches of the manuscript tradition it belonged, what particular lectiones this presented, et cetera, Hollander drew from both the Antico Commento and more recent criticism to suggest ad locum that Dante's efforts to effect correction and enact deliverance from the first of the deadly sins were concentrated on a collation or blend of both Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4 11 . No idle question in the issue at hand inasmuch as the two synoptic versions of the Lord's Prayer do naturally have much in common, but they also present significant differences. The first one, Matthew, is markedly longer but also set against a distinctly different thematic backdrop. The surrounding context would seem to regard more vainglory than pride, concentrating, as it does, on hypocrisy, the desire to be seen to be devout in the synagogue or the town square rather than to worship God in the privacy of one's own home and heart. The Prayer is then followed by two verses of forgiveness (dimissio) developing further the theme already present at Mt. 6, 12, thus producing Dante's insistence on perdono 12 . The context of the third synoptic Gospel, Luke, quite to the contrary, is about teaching, or rather, about humbly learning 9 Cf. Purg. 11,: "Tuo vero dir m'incora / bona umiltà, e gran tumor m'appiani", where, obviously, the "gran tumor" is believing to be that very person born to toss out "l'uno e l'altro [Guido]  At a glance, the idea of collation or blending seems obviously founded, a process that had brought about the form of the Pater noster used in the liturgical oratio dominica in the first place 15 . In this very light, Dante's volgarizzamento or, more broadly speaking, his explanatory paraphrase, takes on board the traditional idea of collation and amalgamation, but also of careful selection. From both Matthew and Luke, Dante borrows and directly translates the "Pater" with "Padre" at v. 1; the "nomen tuum" with "'l tuo nome" at v. 4; the "[ad]veniat regnum tuum" with "Vegna […] tuo regno" (v. 7) and the reprise of the verb with "s' ella non vien" at v. 9. He continues by directly translating the "fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra" with "Come del suo voler… così facciano li uomini de' suoi" (vv. 10-12); the "da nobis" with "Dà […] a noi" (v. 13); and the "et dimitte nobis […] nostris" with "E come noi […] e tu perdona" (this last syntagma to be understood, as Mercuri points out 16 , as "you forgive too"). His translation method then becomes amplification whereby, at vv. 19-21, the "et ne nos inducas in temptationem" becomes, via the 13 Lc. 11, 1. 14 Cf. I Macc. 3, 60: "sicut autem fuerit voluntas in caelo sic fiat". 15 Cf. The Oxford Bible, 943; For the entire paraphrase cum glossa as Dante's attempt to replicate the oratio dominica, ie. a linguistic form and teaching method his readers would instantly recognise and from which possibly even benefit, cf. Mazzucchi, " Filigrane francescane tra i superbi", 49-50. 16 Mercuri, Purgatorio, 125 ad loc. relative clause and precious Gallicism "che di legger s'adona" 17 , his "non spermentar [nostra virtù] con l'antico avversaro", which in turn might be translated with: "do not allow the old enemy to put our virtue to the test who is keen to incite it to evil" 18 . A veritable tour de force, in other words, of synoptic reading.
Furthermore, it is exclusively from Matthew's longer text that Dante seems to have borrowed and directly translated not only the "noster qui in caelis es", completely absent in the more "essential" and less flexible Luke 19 , which becomes his "O Padre nostro, che nei cieli stai" at v. 1, but also Matthew's "sed libera nos a malo" with the substitution/amplification we saw above between the pronoun «nos» and Dante's "Nostra virtù" strengthened via anadiplosis with the preceding syncopated, and typically Dantean, "nostro merto" 20 . Now he similarly substitutes the malum par excellence with the deictic element alluding to him who had never been mentioned by name right from the beginning of Inferno until here, the still unnamed Beelzebub or Satan.
Conversely it is exclusively in Luke, however, that Dante finds the material for further, original exegesis and development. Starting with the end of Dante's paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer, the syntagma "antico avversaro" at v. 20, literally and etymologically pushing our "virtù" away from God and towards him, quite plausibly derives from Luke's greater context in which it is, in turn, God Himself who, in the opposite direction, "eicit daemonium […] Beelzebub principe[m] daemoniorum" 21 . Man is quite stuck, as it were, in this tug of war between the forces of good and those of evil. Pride would push us towards evil while its terminological opposite, humility, would save us. It is up to both our Free Will to decide on the direction in which we are to be swayed and our virtus to find the strength to allow that Salvation to occur.
17 For the meaning here of the Gallicism, cf. entry "adonare" by Fernando Salsano, Enciclopedia Dantesca,vol. 1,[59][60] For the meaning here of the verb spronare, cf. entry "spronare", in Enciclopedia Dantesca, vol. 5, 401. For the "antico avversaro" as a calque of "antiquus hostis", cf. Mercuri, Purgatorio, 125, which, however, is less vetero-testamentary (cf. Dt. 23, 9: "quando egressus adversus hostes tuos in pugnam"; Tob. 12, 10: "qui autem faciunt peccatum et iniquitatem hostes sunt animae suae"; Est. 9, 24: "Agag hostis et adversarius Iudaeorum"; etc.) than Gregorian: "Cernens demium antiquus hostis"; "Hostis antiquus cae- Perhaps marginally less "pertinente" than Matthew on the issue of lexis, as has been adroitly pointed out 22 , Luke is nevertheless essential on the very topic of humility, indeed a co-source or hypotext in its own right for Dante's lesson on curbing pride. The souls that had lived puffed up with pride, that now carry rocks on their backs, forced, therefore, to look only at their feet and the dusty ground, must now recite, perhaps sing, a prayer over and over again, food for moralising thought in an attempt to purge themselves of their proud past 23 . Though based, as we saw above, more on Matthew than on Luke for lexis, it is precisely through Luke, however, that this food provides the necessary nourishment on the theme of pliance and humility. Indeed it is the evangelist Luke, not Matthew, whom Dante terms in his treatise Monarchia to be the "scriba mansuetudinis Cristi", 'he who wrote on Christ's gentleness' 24 . Luke is, therefore, Dante's champion on the theme of Christian meekness, compliance and humility. Most interesting, in fact, from this very point of view in Dante's harvest of Lucan terminology is the syntagma "la cotidiana manna", indeed, the entire line "Dà oggi a noi la cotidiana manna". Hollander ad locum had pointed out that Dante's "cotidiana" is precisely and exclusively Lucan inasmuch as Matthew had opted for a more "spiritual" supersubstantialem. For Matthew the bread we need today is not of wheat but of a divine, life-giving substance. The "more essential" Luke, as we noted above, does not specify the nature of such bread except that we do indeed require its special qualities daily, a concept the evangelist conveys twice in both the adjectival and adverbial forms "cotidianum […] cotidie". The American Dante scholar was right of course to suggest that Dante preferred the wording of the third Gospel, but he overlooked the fact that Dante then again pays homage to Matthew by translating both Luke's "cotidianum" and Matthew's "hodie" -"oggi" at v. 13. What is even more interesting here is that Dante then contaminates his paraphrase with yet another source, different from both Matthew and Luke, the fourth, nonsynoptic Gospel according to John who in turn had drawn from Exodus 25 . Not merely "Dantean", as Maldina points out 26 , but exquisitely Johannine, by substituting Matthew's and Luke's "panem nostrum", "our bread", with John's vetero-testamentary "manna" 27 , Dante effectively bridges the exegetical gap between Matthew and Luke regarding that celestial bread that can truly save. Only by partaking of that bread, that is, only by eating the flesh of Christ and drinking the blood of Christ, the two live-giving elements of the Eucharist, thereby effectively drawing closer to Christ's own Substance, can man hope to escape the "aspro diserto", the "bitter desert", of sin, a condensation reminiscent, in turn, of Dante's own initial plight described in the incipital lines of Inferno as the "selva selvaggia e aspra e forte" 28 , the "piaggia diserta" [my italics] etc. 29 As far as the other elements of Dante's paraphrase are concerned, the "non circunscritto" at v. 2 effectively derives from the Patristic or specifically Augustinian tradition of God 'not confined to any particular place at all but in all places' 30 codified by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologia: "etsi circumscriptus est angelicus spiritus, summus tamen spiritus ipse, qui Deus est, circumscriptus non est" 31 , and is thus 26  The term itself is part of a resemantisation or elevation in a vertical reading of the Comedy 37 , it is in this very sense that Dante would draw on the vast semantic reservoir of Love again to refer to Christ's Incarnation in Mary's virginal womb: "Nel ventre tuo si raccese l'amore" 38 . With respect to this, the term used for the third member of the Trinity, "vapore", begs even further discussion, deriving in all plausibility from the Book of Wisdom in which we read: "vapor est enim virtutis Dei" 39 . If the critical literature here is correct, then God's operational power can be seen to take place, to be set in motion as it were, via this very "vapore". In turn it suggests that for this theologically-pondered translation-cumexegesis Dante must have been thinking in terms of the Πνεῦμα, the 32 Cf. Par. 14, 28-30: "Quell'uno e due e tre che sempre vive / e regna sempre in tre e 'n due e 'n uno, / non circunscritto, e tutto circunscrive" cit. in Mazzucchi, "Filigrane francescane tra i superbi", 48. 33 For the entire paraphrase cum glossa as Dante's attempt to replicate the oratio dominica, ie. a linguistic form and teaching method his readers would instantly recognise and from which possibly even benefit, cf. ibid., 49-50. 34 For doubts as to this possible reference via the alleged attributes of the Father alone, "nome", "valore", "vapore", cf. very theory of pneumatology and the consequential, overriding theme of the unscrutability of Divine Providence 40 . Leaving this last, daunting topic aside, such a derivation would also seem to qualify and further explain Dante's aforementioned substitution/amplification of the pronoun nos with "Nostra virtú" [my italics]. In other words, our capacity for righteousness, our strength or virtue alone, is nullified when compared to that of God's agency, the Holy Spirit. It also, however, qualifies and further explains Dante's translation of the synoptic "nomen tuum", surrounded, as this translation is, by the exquisitely Franciscan optative or 'theological passive' 41 , the "laudato sia" (v. 4) and the complement expressing agency, "da ogne creatura" (v. 5), on which more infra. To be understood as a case of hendiadys, the translation "'l tuo nome e 'l tuo valore" is not new in Dante's linguistic programme. To the contrary, it is similar in many ways to another famous Dantean hendiadys, even in the use of the verb vagliare, which again we find in the proemial canto of Inferno: "vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore" 42 . A type of polyptoton spanning the first two canticles, even with an analogous rhyme scheme, Dante's translation here of "nomen tuum" fits in perfectly with the greater biblical meaning. Indeed, in The Oxford Bible Commentary it is written: "God's 'name' , in accordance with OT imagery, is his very nature […]. To pray for its hallowing, therefore, is to pray that his true nature may be acknowledged by them and his redeeming activity be effective in the world [my italics]" 43 . It is, perhaps, through the very valore of God's name that amore, Christ, can indeed have greater effetti 44 in this world, as Dante glosses, than the Father would have had. He not sent His Son to accomplish the greatest act of humility ever witnessed in world history -to leave the mighty armies of Heaven and take on flesh in a manger for lowly beasts of burden in order to teach man and thus raise him from sin, only to die ignominiously Himself amid unspeakable pain and suffering on the cross. The very first marble relief Dante had seen on the terrace of the proud in Purgatory, that staggering, almost living, breathing, talking example of ekphrasis, allerting the reader to this very issue, the instance not only of Mary's humility but also of God's own, the very Father who, via Gabriel and the Annunciation, spoke those three simple words, "Ecce ancilla Dei", is still teaching Dante here and through him, us, that Christ's Incarnation reduces man's pride to nothing, this one sublime act of humility, the example to follow 45 .
Such a line of reasoning also brings us to yet another co-source or hypotext used in the paraphrase-cum-exegesis of the Lord's Prayer, a text neither cited nor acknowledged in any explicit form in the Comedy, and yet somehow present throughout, the Franciscan Canticle of the Creatures, also known as the Canticle of Brother Sun or the Laudes creaturarum 46   In his Canticle, therefore, which, incidentally, later friars minor would be exhorted to recite and sing together with the Lord's Prayer as if the former were the translation of, or at least, the perfect accompaniment to, the latter 54 , the synoptic optative and semantically-difficult "sanctificetur" had become the famous Franciscan «Laudato si(e)» and, in turn, Dante's "laudato sia"; the synoptic omission of the effective agent actually "hallowing" the Lord's name is introduced by Francis via the still-debated Latin prepositions cum and per 55 , which Dante rightly recognises as problematic and so clarifies, indeed solves, via the "clearer" Italian preposition of agency, da, the agent being in the respective cases "tucte le tue creature" and the exquisite Franciscan technical term "ogne creatura"; the idea of being worthy "degno" at v. 5 of giving thanks to God by recognising His work accomplished through the Holy Spirit, though in all likelihood Pauline in origin 56 , nevertheless echoes Francis' warning that no man is worthy of speaking God's name -"nullu homo ene dignu te mentouare" 57 [my italics]; and whereas the "sweetness" of Dante's "dolce vapore" or the "peace" of His kingdom "la pace del tuo regno" might at this point be allusions to a generically Franciscan understanding of these already semantically -and theologically-charged technical terms, Dante's inclusive "Vegna ver' noi" is close, albeit opposite in direction, to Francis' humble "facias nos venire ad regnum tuum" used in the Expositio in Pater noster 58 , and Dante's segnor caro at v. 22, reinforced by the benigno at v. 18, might well specifically allude in turn to, or derive from, the famous Franciscan anaphorical vocative of courteous affect, "misignore" -"Laudato sie misignore", etc. in the Canticle of the Creatures. That Dante in the incipital lines of the eleventh canto of the second canticle may have been thinking within a Franciscan paradigm, indeed, in "una forma di manifestazione di spiritualità francescana" 59 , is actually in keeping with the above-mentioned parallel or vertical readings popular today in Dante studies 60 . Just as the sixth canto of every canticle is now primarily seen in a political sense and the last canto of each understood as being, in the very least, structurally analogous, Purgatorio 11 may also be seen in parallel with Paradiso 11, the Franciscan canto par excellence, both offsetting cantos 10, 11 and 12 of Inferno based, as these are, on pride, a veritable "trittico della superbia" 61 . Indeed, Dante's line "a retro va chi piú di gir s'affanna" at v. 15 would seem to anticipate the longer denunciation in Paradiso 11, 3-9 of quei che ti fanno in basso batter l'ali! 3 Chi dietro a iura e chi ad amforismi sen giva, e chi seguendo sacerdozio, e chi regnar per forza o per sofismi, 6 e chi rubare e chi civil negozio, chi nel diletto de la carne involto s'affaticava 62 .
The denunciation of pride in and around canto 11 of Inferno alludes to the remedy of such pride in Purgatory 11 via a lesson on humility, which in turn prepares the reader both thematically and lexically for the example of humility par excellence, Saint Francis himself who, in Paradiso 11, "da Cristo prese l'ultimo sigillo" 63 , that is to say, the stigmata, the signs or 'seals' of Christ's Passion in his living flesh.
If Dante was looking for an illustrious lesson for his proud souls on the first terrace of Purgatory and, through them, the haughty among the living, on how to pray to the Lord in absolute humility, then in Francis he had certainly found it. No other poem to the Lord in the vernacular ends so explicitly and so disarmingly on the theme of service to the Lord in absolute humility: Laudate et benedicete misignore et rengratiate et seruiate li cum grande humilitate 64 .
In the wake of such reasoning, it would seem consequential to formulate the hypothesis that Dante was still thinking along these very lines in the third canticle. When moving up from Paradiso 11 to Paradiso 22 (a multiple of eleven), where the adverb associated with Francis' quest is «umilmente» 65 , between canto thirty-two and canto thirty-three of Paradiso (another multiple of eleven) he moves from the catalogue «Francesco, Benedetto e Augustino» 66 , the three saints who, together with anonymous "altri" 67 , sit for eternity directly opposite the Virgin Mary, only then to define the very Mother of God in the divine paradox of being both «umile e alta» with the exquisitely Franciscan apposition and programme «piú che creatura» [my italics] 68 . She had not only been created. She had also been found to be humble and yielding, worthy, therefore, of becoming the very means through which God might redeem and thus save humanity.
Dante's emulation of the Franciscan prayer is not, however, limited or circumscribed to a question of thematics and language, though this certainly would be enough to number the saint from Assisi among the great sources for the Divine Comedy. It is also a matter of structure. As has recently been demonstrated elsewhere 69 , the structure or model behind the poetic Canticle of the Creatures is the poetic prose of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, otherwise called the Beatitudines 70 , from which Dante quite adroitly extrapolates the "Beati pauperes spiritu" in Paradiso 12, 110, the very line used by Augustine to combat pride, the origin of every sin 71 . Both the Sermon on the Mount and the Franciscan Canticle begin with either the arrival or the invocation of Jesus; the anaphorical elements, "Beati qui…" and "Laudate si misignore per" respectively, are used the same number of times, eight; there is a reprise of the anaphora, albeit in a different fashion; and both end with a double imperative in the second person plural. Francis would seem to have modelled his lesson on how to pray to the Lord on the lesson imparted by the Lord Himself from a mountain top. Did Dante in turn emulate this Franciscan way of emulating the Lord's didactic method by composing his purgatorial poem in eight tercets (7 petitiones corresponding to the seven deadly sins and a closing tercet or "antifora")? 72 Does the quote from the Sermon on the Mount in Paradiso 12 prove that Dante had implicitly understood the connection between the Franciscan Canticle and Jesus' teaching method? And had Dante heard, furthermore, that the Franciscan Canticle had originally been put to music by Francis himself and fancied that the proud souls in Purgatory 11 might even be singing his own paraphrase in the same or a similar fashion, fused, perhaps, with the liturgical tradition behind the Pater noster? 73 The second fascicle of the famous manuscript 338 of Assisi containing the oldest transcription of the Franciscan Canticle with lines left for the musical notation has, by the way, been authoritatively dated exeunte saeculo decimo tertio -ineunte saeculo decimo quarto, which 72 For the significance of the number seven in this light, cf. Mazzucchi, "Filigrane francescane tra i superbi", 54-55. For the "antifora" (Buti), cf. the Franciscan tradition, this in itself homage to the Magister par excellence, Christ, the opening to Purgatory 11 stems from the very root of the Christian tradition of teaching how to pray, an intertextual and theological lesson in humility for the proud, almost as living, breathing and talking as the friezes on that very terrace of Purgatory, an eloquent and deeply moving lesson perhaps even for the proud Dante himself.