Lady of virtue
Read the full text in our reader
“ O donna di virtù sola per cui l’ umana spezie eccede ogne contento di quel ciel c’ ha minor li cerchi sui,
“O lady of virtue, through whom alone the human race surpasses all that is held within the heaven of the smallest circles,
Virgil answers Beatrice: O lady of virtue, through whom alone the human race exceeds all that is contained by the smallest-circled heaven,
Virgil answers her praise with greater praise. <i>Donna di virtù</i> — lady of power — is theology in a phrase: through her, and grace like hers, humankind rises above the whole sublunar order, the sphere of the moon whose orbit is the smallest.
The cosmology is medieval and exact: the moon's heaven encloses the changeable earthly world, and the human soul, touched by grace, exceeds all of it. Virgil frames Beatrice as the reason a mortal can outreach the mortal.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Inferno 2.76 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Inferno — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Inferno 2.76 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/dante-inferno/2.76/