Page 31 - GALIET DOOMSDAY AND DANTE´S PROPHECY 515: Dante IV

and Millennium,112 the last limit of number and a symbol of perfection.113 The M 3⁄4 whose formation flourishes from the just souls towards Florence’s heraldic Lily transcends every Florentine boundary towards Biblical ones. It shall be the Lily that blossoms over Dante’s barren and corrupt Italy, bleak mirror of the ‘desolate and impassable’ land of Isaiah, 35:2.114 It shall be the heavenward and sunward Lily that blossoms naturally over the syllables of Luke 12:27.115 Lily that transforms into a heraldic Eagle: its eye gleams the two lines of descent from David and Aeneas, the lines of Christ’s Church and the Roman Empire;116 its pupil is the inner light of King David, ‘il cantor de lo Spirito Santo;’117 its eyelid arch forms the pentad of justice; the justice of four wise monarchs along a fifth just Trojan warrior. Cacciaguda’s five and six cryptogram also suggests that God will radiate the five kings and a mysterious sixth. For the singers of the Eagle in the 6th Heaven of Jupiter accept Dante as sixth in their brotherhood, completing the number of earthly perfection.118 The justice of the Eagle, like the justice of the Rose, Hopper says, “will include a harmony of all dualities: Old Testament and New Testament, the two felicities of man, action and contemplation or the civil and spiritual life, State and Church.”119
112 Critics have proposed the M to stand for millennium and monarchy. The M-turned Eagle signifies Roman Rule ordained by God to attain peace and unity of the world. This emblem is spelled out by the souls of the just and indicates Dante's emerging comprehension of the meaning of history and the divine pattern of justice.
113 Foster Hopper. Medieval Number Symbolism. 180
114 “The land that was desolate and impassable shall be glad, and the wilderness shall rejoice, and shall flourish like the lily...”
115 “See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin...”
116 Foster Hopper. Medieval Number Symbolism. 180
117 Par. 20, 38.
118 Six is the first perfect number (1+2+3=6). Foster Hopper. Medieval Number Symbolism. 36.
119 Foster Hopper. Medieval Number Symbolism. 180
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