As Dante and Beatrice begin their ascent to the Empyrean in canto 3 of the Paradiso, they alight on the moon where they encounter pale spirits, not mere reflections but “true substances … assigned [there] for inconstancy to holy vows” (Dante, 29-31).1 Encouraged by Beatrice, Dante asks an eager soul identified as Piccarda Donati, a Poor Clare abducted from a Florentine convent by her brother and coerced into a politically expedient marriage, “through what warp she had not entirely passed the shuttle of her vow” (Dante, 95-96). Like the followers of Saint Clare who “go cloaked and veiled on earth,” she replies, “as a girl, I fled the world to walk the way she walked and closed myself into her habit, pledged to her sisterhood till my last day” (Dante, 98-99, 103-05).

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