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Modern Italy
Journal of Modern Italian Studies
RIVISTA DI STUDI ITALIANI
Anno XIV , n° 1, Giugno 1996 ( Contributi ) pag. 1-12
VISIBLE SPEECH, LIVING STONE, AND
THE NAMES OF THE WORD
JAMES T. CHIAMPI
University of California at Irvine,
Irvine, California
In his first epistle (2.2-8), Peter names Christ the "living stone" and enjoins his fellow Christians to become living stones themselves:

"As newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile, that thereby you may grow unto salvation: If so be you have tasted that the Lord is sweet. Unto whom coming, as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen and made honourable by God: Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Wherefore it is said in the scripture: Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious. And he that shall believe in him, shall not be confounded. To you therefore that believe, he is honour: but to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set"1.

The imagery of living and dead stone familiar from this passage of Peter as well as from the gospels and Old Testament also dominates Purgatorio X-XII, the canti that describe the penitence of the sinners of pride2. Living stone: the mountain that seems to be moving and the reliefs sculpted by God that seem to speak, portraying the Virgin at the Annunciation, David dancing before the Ark, and Trajan responding to the Widow, reliefs whose realism sets the Pilgrim's senses at odds with one another. [...]
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