Sarah

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Sarah is mentioned by Dante in the thirty-seventh canto of Paradise, in the passage where Bernard points out the women seated beneath the figure of Mary in the white rose. The name is introduced alongside Rebecca, Judith, and another female figure in the catalogue of mothers and wives of the chosen people. The authorized critical note for the canto confirms that the rose is led by the Madonna, with Eve placed as she who opened the wound of original sin, closed and healed by Mary. Sarah is thus presented as a blessed spirit of the host that Bernard shows to the pilgrim in the Empyrean heaven, with no further moral or narrative qualification provided by the text or the commentary.