Roma in Vigilia Nativitatis Christi, vidi
turiam magnam, quam dinumerare nemo
poterat; et fama erat inter Romanos,
quod ibi fuerant plusquam vigenti centum
millia virorum et mulierum. Pluries ego
idi ibi tam viros quam mulieres concul-
atos sub pedibus aliorum; et etiam ego-
But in eodem periculo plures vices evasi.
Papa innumerabilem pecuniam ab eisdem
recepit, quia die ac nocte duo clerici sta-
bant ad altare Sancti Pauli tenentes in
erum manibus rastellos, rastellantes pe-
caniam infinitam. To accommodate
the throng of pilgrims, and to protect
them as far as possible from the danger
which Ventura feelingly describes, a
barrier was erected along the middle of
the bridge, under the Castle of Sant'
Angelo, so that those going to St.
Peter's and those coming from the
church, passing on opposite sides,
might
not interfere with each other.
It seems not unlikely that Dante him-
self was one of the crowd who thus
crossed the old bridge, over whose
arches, during this year, a flood of men
was flowing almost as constantly as the
river's flood ran through below.

66

and the Golden Fleece, see Ovid, Me
tamorph. VII. Also Chaucer, Legendi
of Goode Women :-

"Thou roote of fals loveres, duke Jason!
Thou slye devourer and confusyon
Of gentil wommen, gentil creatures!"
92.

When the women of Lemnos put to death all the male inhabitants of the island, Hypsipyle concealed her father Thoas, and spared his life. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautics, II., Fawkes's Tr. :

"Hipsipyle alone, illustrious maid,

Spared her sire Thoas, who the sceptre swayed."

122. "Allessio Interminelli," says Benvenuto da Imola, "a soldier, a nobleman, and of gentle manners, was of Lucca, and from him descended that tyrant Castruccio who filled all Tuscany with fear, and was lord of Pisa, Lucca, and Pistoja, of whom Dante makes no mention, because he became illustrious after the author's death. Allessio took such delight in flattery, that he could not open his mouth without flattering. He besmeared everybody, even the lowest menials."

133. Thaïs, the famous courtesan of Athens. Terence, The Eunuch, Act III. Sc. 1:

"Thraso. Did Thaïs really return me many thanks?

"Gnatho. Exceeding thanks.
"Thraso. Was she delighted, say

31. The castle is the Castle of St. The Ottimo says, that in the dialect of Angelo, and the mountain Monte Gia-Lucca, the head" was facetiously called nicolo. See Barlow, Study of Dante, p. a pumpkin." 126. Others say Monte Giordano. 50. "This Caccianimico," says Benvenuto da Imola, was a Bolognese; a liberal, noble, pleasant, and very powerful man." Nevertheless, he was so utterly corrupt as to sell his sister, the fair Ghisola, to the Marquis of Este. 51. In the original the word is salse. "In Bologna," says Benvenuto da Imola, "the name of Salse is given to a certain valley outside the city, and near to Santa Maria in Monte, into which the mortal remains of desperadoes, usurers, and other infamous persons are wont to be thrown. Hence I have sometimes heard boys in Bologna say to each other, by way of insult, "Your father was thrown into the Salse.'

61. The two rivers between which Bologna is situated. In the Bolognese dialect sipa is used for sì.

72. They cease going round the circles as heretofore, and now go straight forward to the centre of the abyss. 86. For the story of Jason, Medea,

you?

"Gnatho. Not so much, indeed, at the present itself, as because it was given by you; really, in right earnest, she does exult at that.

136. "The filthiness of some passages,' "" exclaims Landor, Pentameron, p. 15, "would disgrace the drunkenest horse-dealer; and the names of such criminals are recorded by the poet, as would be forgotten by the hangman in six months."

"Altri per simonia

Si getta in mala via,
E Dio e' Santi offende
E vende le prebende,
E Sante Sagramente,

E mette 'nfra la gente
Assempri di mal fare.
Ma questo lascio stare,
Chè tocca a ta' persone,

Che non è mia ragione
Di dirne lungamente."

Chaucer, Persones Tale, speaks thus of Simony ·-

"Certes simonie is cleped of Simon Magus, that wold have bought for temporel catel the yefte that God had yeven by the holy gost to Seint Peter, and to the Apostles and therfore understond ye, that both he that selleth and he that byeth thinges spirituel ben called Simoniackes, be it by catel, be it by procuring, or by fleshly praier of his frendes, fleshly frendes, or spirituel frendes, fleshly in two maners, as by kindrede or other frendes sothly, if they pray for him that is not worthy and able, it is simonie, if he take the benefice: and if he be worthy and able, ther is non."

5. Gower, Confes. Amant. I. :-
"A trompe with a sterne breth,
Which was cleped the trompe of deth.

He shall this dredfull trompe blowe
To-fore his gate and make it knowe,
How that the jugement is yive

Of deth, which shall nought be foryive."

19. Lami, in his Delicia Eruditorum, makes a strange blunder in reference to this passage. He says: "Not long ago the baptismal font, which stood in the middle of Saint John's at Florence, was removed; and in the pavement may still be seen the octagonal shape of its ample outline. Dante says, that, when a boy, he fell into it and was near drowning; or rather he fell into one of the circular basins of water, which surrounded the principal font." Upon this Arrivabeni, Comento Storico, p. 588, where I find this extract, remarks: "Not

20. Dante's enemies had accused him of committing this act through im piety. He takes this occasion to vindicate himself.

33. Probably an allusion to the red stockings worn by the Popes.

50. Burying alive with the head downward and the feet in the air was the inhuman punishment of hired assas sins, "according to justice and the municipal law in Florence," says the Of timo. It was called Propagginare, to plant in the manner of vine-stocks.

Dante stood bowed down like the confessor called back by the criminal in order to delay the moment of his

death.

53. Benedetto Gaetani, Pope Boniface VIII. Gower, Conf. Amant. II., calls him

"Thou Boneface, thou proude clerke, Misleder of the papacie."

This is the Boniface who frightened Celestine from the papacy, and persecuted him to death after his resignation. "The lovely Lady' is the Church. The fraud was his collusion with Charles II. of Naples. "He went to King Charles by night, secretly, and with few attendants," says Villani, VIII. ch. 6, "and said to him: King, thy Pope Celestine had the will and the power to serve thee in thy Sicilian wars, but did not know how: but if thou wilt contrive with thy friends the cardinals to have me elected Pope, I shall know how, and shall have the will and the power:" promising upon his faith and oath to aid him with all the power of the Church." Farther on he continues: "He was very magnanimous and lordly, and demanded great honour, and knew well how to maintain and advance the cause of the Church, and on account of his knowledge and power was much dreaded and feared. He was avaricious exceedingly in order to aggrandize the Church and his relations, not being over scrupulous about gains, for he said that all things were lawful which were of the Church."

He was chosen Pope in 1294. “The inauguration of Boniface," says Milman,

Latin Christ., Book IX., ch. 7, was he most magnificent which Rome had ver beheld. In his procession to St. leter's and back to the Lateran palace, here he was entertained, he rode not a Tumble ass, but a noble white horse, y caparisoned: he had a crown on is head; the King of Naples held the die on one side, his son, the King of ngary, on the other. The nobility of Rome, the Orsinis, the Colonnas, the Savellis, the Stefaneschi, the Annibaldi, who had not only welcomed him to Rome, but conferred on him the Senatorial dignity, followed in a body: the procession could hardly force its way through the masses of the kneeling people. In the midst, a furious hurricane burst over the city, and extingrished every lamp and torch in the church. A darker omen followed: a rot broke out among the populace, in which forty lives were lost. The day after, the Pope dined in public in the Lateran; the two Kings waited behind

his chair."

Roman house, 'he Orsini, a man of remarkable beauty of person and demeanour. His name, 'the Accomplished,' implied that in him met all the graces of the handsomest clerks in the world, but he was a man likewise of irreproachable morals, of vast ambition, and of great ability." He died in 1280.

83. The French Pope Clement V., elected in 1305, by the influence of Philip the Fair of France, with sundry humiliating conditions. He transferred the Papal See from Rome to Avignon, where it remained for seventy-one years in what Italian writers call its Babylonian captivity." He died in 1314, on his way to Bordeaux. "He had hardly crossed the Rhone," says Milman, Lat. Christ., Book XII. ch. 5, "when he was seized with mortal sickness at Roquemaure. The Papal treasure was seized by his followers, especially his nephew; his remains were treated with such utter neglect, that the torches set fire to the catafalque under which he lay, not in state. His body, covered only with a single sheet, all that his rapacious retinue had left to shroud their forgotten master, was half burned ... before alarm was raised. His ashes were borne back to Carpentras and solemnly interred."

Dante indulges towards him a fierce Ghibelline hatred, and assigns him his place of torment before he is dead. In Canto XXVII. 85, he calls him "the Prince of the new Pharisees;" and, after many other bitter allusions in various parts of the poem, puts into the mouth 85. Jason, to whom Antiochus Epiof St. Peter, Par. XXVII. 22, the ter-phanes granted a "license to set him up rible invective that makes the whole a place for exercise, and for the trainheavens red with anger. ing up of youth in the fashions of the heathen."

"He who usurps upon the earth my place,
My place, my place, which vacant has be-

come

Now in the presence of the Son of God,

Has of my cemetery made a sewer

Of blood and fetor, whereat the Perverse,

2 Maccabees iv. 13: "Now such was the height of Greek fashions, and increase of the heathenish manners, through the exceeding profaneness of Jason, that ungodly wretch and not

Who fell from here, below there is ap-high priest, that the priests had no cou

peased."

See Note 87,

He died in 1303. Purg. XX. 70. Nicholas III., of the Orsini (the Bears) of Rome, chosen Pope in 1277. He was the first Pope, or one of the first," says Villani, VII. ch. 54, "in whose court simony was openly pracOn account of his many accomplishments he was surnamed Il Compiuto. Milman, Lat. Christ., Book XI. ch. 4, says of him: "At length the election fell or John Gaetano, of the noble

tised."

rage to serve any more at the altar, but, despising the temple, and neglecting the sacrifices, hastened to be partakers of the unlawful allowance in the place of exercise, after the game of Discus called them forth."

87. Philip the Fair of France. See Note 82. "He was one of the handsomest men in the world," says Villani, IX. 66, "and one of the largest in person, and well proportioned in every limb,--a wise and good man for a lay. man."