In today’s canto, Thomas Aquinas performs yet more intellectual winnowing on Dante, explaining how it came to be that none arose wiser than Solomon. To do this, he resorts to much succinctly reasoned Scholastic syllogizing, in which he employs the theory of Platonic forms and decries the largely useless metaphysical hair-splitting of so many thinkers and philosophers.

Trans. John Ciardi

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