[3] The plant of which the words are splinters or chips; in other terms, “thou wilt understand the whole ground of my assertion, and thou wilt see what a Dominican, wearer of the leather thong of the Order, means, when he says that the flock of Dominic fatten, if they stray not from the road on which he leads them.” CANTO XII. Second circle of the spirits of wise religious men, doctors of the Church and teachers.—St. Bonaventura narrates the life of St. Dominic, and tells the names of those who form the circle with him. Soon as the blessed flame uttered the last word of its speech the holy mill-stone[1] began to rotate, and had not wholly turned in its gyration before another enclosed it with a circle, and matched motion with motion, song with song; song which in those sweet pipes so surpasses our Muses, our Sirens, as a primal splendor that which it reflects.[2] As two bows parallel and of like colors are turned across a thin cloud when Juno gives the order to her handmaid[3] (the outer one born of that within, after the manner of the speech of that wandering one[4] whom love consumed, as the sun does vapors), and make the people here presageful, because of the covenant which God established with Noah concerning the world, that it is nevermore to be flooded; so the two garlands of those sempiternal roses turned around us, and so the outer responded to the inner. After the dance and the other great festivity, alike of the singing and of the flaming, light with light joyous and courteous, had become quiet together at an instant and with one will (just as the eyes which must needs together close and open to the pleasure that moves them), from the heart of one of the new lights a voice proceeded, which made me seem as the needle to the star in turning me to its place and it began,[5] “The love which makes me beautiful draws me to speak of the other leader by whom[6] so well has been spoken here of mine. It is fit that where one is the other be led in, so that as they served in war with one another, together likewise may their glory shine. [1] The garland of spirits encircling Beatrice and Dante. [2] As an original ray is brighter than one reflected. [3] Iris. [4] Echo. [5] It is St. Bonaventura, the biographer of St. Francis, who speaks. He became General of the Order in 1256, and died in 1276. [6] By whom, through one of his brethren. “The army of Christ, which it had cost so dear to arm afresh,[1] was moving slow, mistrustful, and scattered, behind the standard,[2] when the Emperor who forever reigns provided for the soldiery that was in peril, through grace alone, not because it was worthy, and, as has been said, succored his Bride with two champions, by whose deed, by whose word, the people gone astray were rallied. [1] The elect, who had lost grace through Adam's sin, were armed afresh by the costly sacirifice of the Son of God. [2] The Cross.