[46] _Defensor Pacis_ written c. 1324 (three years after Dante’s death) to support the claims of the Emperor Lewis IX (of Bavaria) against Pope John XXII, starts, as Dante does, from Aristotle and Holy Scripture, but carries the relentless exposure of papal pretensions much further, and strikes the note of appeal to a General Council which was one of the watchwords of the Reformation. [47] This theme he took up earlier in the Fourth Treatise of the _Convivio_, chaps. iv. and v. [48] _Cf._ especially his quotations from the _Aeneid_ in _Conv._ IV, iv. (Bemp., 252) and _Mon._ II, vii. 70 _sqq._ (Bemp., 381); the Divine injunction is taken by Dante, almost as though the _Aeneid_ were ‘Scripture’! Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, momento, Hae tibi erunt artes, pacique imponere morem; Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. —_Aen._ vi. 852-4. [49] _Inf._ i. 82. [50] vi. 34-96. [51] W. W. Vernon, _Readings on the Paradiso_, Vol. I, p. 199. [52] _Par._ vi. 103-104. [53] _Purg._ vii. 94; vi. 97. [54] _Purg._ xvi. 106 _sqq._; 127 _sqq._ [55] _Purg._ vi. 76 _sqq._ [56] _Purg._ vi. fin. [57] _Ep._ vii. [58] _Cf._ _Purg._ x. 35. [59] _Ep._ vii. 44, p. 410, Oxf. Ed.; p. 427, Bemporad. [60] I. xii. 58; Oxf. Ed. p. 347; p. 365, Bemporad. [61] _Purg._ i. 75. [62] II, v. 158 _sqq._; Oxf. Ed. II, v. 17; p. 379, Bemporad. [63] _Cf._ _Mon._ I, xi. Bemporad, pp. 362-364. [64] _Mon._ I, v. [65] _Od._ ix. 114-115. θεμιστεύει δὲ ἕκαστος Παίδων ἠδ’ ἀλόγων.... [66] οὐδ’ ἀλλήων ἀλέγουσιν. [67] _Pol._ i. 2. [68] It is interesting to note, in this connection, that when Dante, in his work on “The Vulgar Tongue,” is seeking a _Literary_ Tribunal—a sort of Academy of Letters—he asserts that where there is no Prince, his presence may be supplied by ‘the gracious light of reason.’ There is no king, he says, in Italy, as there is in Germany, to gather to his court poets and _literati_ and form in his own person the centre of a brilliant literary circle; but the members of such a court—the elements of such a circle—are there, though scattered, and they have a bond of union in the _gratioso lumine rationis_.—_V.E._ I, xviii. fin; Oxf. p. 389; Bemporad, p. 336. [69] _Mon._ I, xi. 78-110. Oxf., p. 346; Bemp., pp. 363 _sq._ [70] _Ep._ vii. [71] _Par._ xxx. 133 _sqq._