Commentary Par X 40-42

Placella (Plac.1987.1), p. 222, follows Petrocchi in thinking that this effulgence is not that emanating from Beatrice (as most early commentators believed, perhaps encouraged by her presence in the preceding terzina), but of the souls in the Sun, who are so bright that they outshine even that brightest of all celestial bodies.  For a fairly early instance (ca. 1791) of the current majority sense of this tercet, see Lombardi (DDP Lombardi.Par.X.40-45), citing the prophet Daniel, whose final vision (Daniel 12:3) portrays the wise as shining with the brightness of the sun.  Rebecca Beal (Beal.1985.1), p. 63, as part of her project to read Beatrice surrounded by the twelve souls (who also surround Dante, we should remember) as the 'woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars' of Apocalypse 12:1, i.e., as Ecclesia, the Church.  However, the next verse (Apoc. 12:2) tells us that this woman is pregnant, which hardly works out in Beal's equation, and so, like the moon beneath her feet, is allowed the silent treatment.  Returning to this biblical text and its relationship to the heaven of the Sun, Beal (Beal.1996.1), p. 211, now intent on demonstrating Bonaventure's conspicuous interest in 'the woman clothed with the sun' in his sermons, notes that while, in two of them, he does indeed refer to her as Ecclesia, he far more often considers her as a representation of Mary (as her pregnant condition invites the reader to surmise).  And thus Beal argues that her valence changes once we leave the tenth canto behind.