Commentary Par VII 1-3

See Tozer's translation and note (DDP Tozer.Par.VII.1-3): '"Hosanna, holy God of hosts, who by Thy brightness dost illuminate from above the happy fires of these realms."  These verses appear to have been Dante's own, not a hymn of the Church; but they are in Latin, to correspond to other mediaeval hymns.  malacoth: as Dante required a rhyme for Sabaoth -- no easy thing to find -- he availed himself of the word malachoth, which he met with in St. Jerome's Preface to the Vulgate, where it is translated by regnorum (realms).  The proper form of this, which is read in modern editions of the Vulgate, is mamlachot, but in Dante's time malachoth was the accepted reading.'

For glossolalia ('speaking in tongues') as a concern to Dante, see Hollander (Holl.1992.1).  And see Di Scipio (Disc.1995.1), p. 281, for another assertion that [Inf VII 1] is a parodic version of glossolalia.  Sarolli, who almost gets credit for being the first writer to connect, in an oppositional relation, the first lines of this canto with those of the seventh canto of Inferno, 'Pape Satàn, pape Satàn, aleppe! ({Sarolli.1971.1}, pp. 289-90), also unaccountably urges a reader to understand that the macaronic passage includes, not only Hebrew and Latin, but Greek.  (Tommaseo [DDP Tommaseo.Par.VII.1-3], in passing, does mention Inf. VII.1 in conjunction with the opening of Par. VII, thus depriving Sarolli of an honor he merits, since Tommaseo makes no effort to deal with the significance of the phenomenon he has observed.)