Commentary Par XI 64-66

While at first the reader is perhaps not sure as to the identity of Poverty's first husband, it will soon (at verse 72) become clear that she was Jesus' 'wife,' left a widow by the Crucifixion in A.D. 34, and remaining 'unmarried' for 1173 years, unwanted by any other suitor, until Francis' vow in 1207.

Dante has outdone himself.  The writings about Francis (who was practically the cause of the explosion of the biography industry all by himself [there were at least eight 'lives' produced within the century of his death]) have, except for the Gospels, no antecedents.  Dante's addition to existing Franciscan material is spectacularly original in its reworking of the basic narrative found in Bonaventure and others.  Dante expands the role of poverty not so much conceptually (the devotion to poverty is the keystone of all Franciscan writings) but stylistically, making his saintly life an allegorical tale of his relationship to her.  He can, given the abundance of 'official lives,' count on his readers to fill in the by then familiar historical details.

For the influence of Franciscan lyric poetry (and especially that of Iacopone da Todi) on Dante, see Vettori (Vett.2004.1), pp. 120-22.  And for its influence on a critic, writing on this canto, see Nardi (Nard.1965.2), who produced a footnoteless Franciscan lectura of the eleventh canto, revealing the charm of imitation.  Luciano Rossi (Ross.2002.1), pp. 170-72, follows up a suggestion of Lucia Battaglia Ricci (Batt.1997.1), p. 42, and argues that Dante's canto reflects Francis's Laudes creaturarum (see C.Inf.I.117).

It seems possible that the author of the Commedia has, improbable as this may seem, gone beyond the prideful bearing that afflicted so much of his earlier work and attained a kind of humility (see Hollander [Holl.2003.2]).  For the crucial role of Francis in the development of that humility, particularly as counter-force to the arid intellectual pride that leads to heresy, see Veglia (Vegl.2000.1), pp. 75-97.