 For Dante there are four main features of any mode of expression appropriate for these tasks. Dante identifies these four features as a vernacular’s illustriousness, cardinality, courtliness, and curiality. That such a language can generate virtues in human beings is precisely what Dante means in 1.17 when he calls such a language “illustrious” since such a language is “sublime in both learning and power” [1.17.2]. And, in 1.18, Dante explains that such a language is “cardinal,” or “pivotal,” (cardinalis) because it “plants” (plantat) what is best and peculiar to specific local vernaculars and “removes” (exstirpat) what is disreputable [1.18.1]. It is “courtly” or “aulic” (aulicus) because “it is common to all and the property of none” [1.18.2]. And it is “curial” (curialis) because it has been weighed by the scales of justice in a court unified either under the rule of a singular monarch or—as is the case for Dante’s Italian contemporaries, who lack a unified court in this sense—according to a court unified by “the gracious light of reason” [1.18.5]. This last criterion thus suggests that such a vernacular also depends upon and expresses the principles of just rule since, according to Dante, “the essence of being curial is no more than providing a balanced assessment of whatever has to be dealt with” [1.18.4].