Chapter IV

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[139] Compare the succession of Heavens in Dante’s _Paradiso_.

[140] One may recall Raphael’s painting of Theology on the ceiling of the Stanza del Segnatura in the Vatican. It is impossible not to compare the rôles of Alan’s Reason and Theology with those of Virgil and Beatrice in the _Commedia_.

[141] Here we are back in the _Celestial Hierarchy_ of Dionysius the Areopagite.

[142] As in Dante’s _Paradiso_.

[143] Most of these epithets of the Virgin come from allegorical interpretations of the text of the Vulgate.

[144] Compare the final vision of Dante in _Paradiso_, xxxiii.

[145] The reader will notice the Platonism and Neo-Platonism of all this.

[146] Notice that the Arts are here equipping and perfecting the man for his fight against sin;--which corresponds with the common mediaeval view of the function of education.

[147] The poem gives a full description of Fortune and her house, and unstable splendid gifts.

[148] But the different names of Alanus’s Virtues and Vices, and their novel antagonisms, indicate an original view of morality with him. On the _Psychomachia_ see Taylor, _Classical Heritage_, pp. 278 _sqq._ and 379. Allegorical combats and _débats_ (both in Latin and in the vernacular tongues) are frequent in mediaeval literature. Cf. _e.g._ _post_,