59. The three remaining sins to be purged away are Avarice, Gluttony, and Lust. 61. See Canto XIV. 148. 73. Psalms cxix. 25: "My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy word." 99. Know that I am the successor of Peter. It is Pope Adrian the Fifth who speaks. He was of the family of the Counts of Lavagna, the family taking its title from the river Lavagna, flowing between Siestri and Chiaveri, towns on the Riviera di Genova. He was Pope only thirty-nine days, and died in 1276. When his kindred came to congratulate him on his election, he said, "Would that ye came to a Cardinal in good health, and not to a dying Pope." 134. Revelation xix. 10: "And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not, I am thy fellow-servant." 137. Matthew xxii. 30: 'For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven." He reminds Dante that here all earthly distinctions and relations are laid aside. He is no longer "the Spouse of the Church." 141. Penitence; line 92: "In whom weeping ripens That without which to God we cannot turn." 142. Madonna Alagia was the wife of Marcello Malespini, that friend of Dante with whom, during his wanderings he took refuge in the Lunigiana, in 1307. 23. The inn at Bethlehem. 25. The Roman Consul who rejected with disdain the bribes of Pyrrhus, and died so poor that he was buried at the public expense, and the Romans were obliged to give a dowry to his daughters. Virgil, Eneid, VI. 844, calls him "powerful in poverty.' Dante also extols him in the Convito, IV. 5. 31. Gower, Conf. Amant., V. 13:— "Betwene the two extremites Of vice stont the propertes Stant and governeth his noblesse. The 32. This is St. Nicholas, patron saint of children, sailors, and travellers. incident here alluded to is found in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, the great storehouse of medieval wonders. It may be found also in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, II. 62, and in her version runs thus: "Now in that city there dwelt a certain nobleman who had three daughters, and, from being rich, he became poor; so poor that there remained no means of obtaining food for his daughters but by sacrificing them o an infamous life; and oftentimes it came into his mind to tell them so, but shame and sorrow held him dumb. Meantime the what to do, and not having bread to eat ; maidens wept continually, not knowing and their father became more and more desperate. When Nicholas heard of this, he thought it a shame that such a thing should happen in a Christian land; therefore one night, when the maidens were asleep, and their father alone sat watching and weeping, he took a handful of gold, and, tying it up in a handkerchief, he repaired to the dwelling of He considered how he the poor man. might bestow it without making himself known, and, while he stood irresolute, the moon coming from behind a cloud showed him a window open; so he threw it in, and it fell at the feet of the father, who, when he found it, returned thanks, and with it he portioned his eldest daughter. A second time Nicho las provided a similar sum, and again he threw it in by night; and with it the nobleman married his second daughter. But he greatly desired to know who it was that came to his aid; therefore he determined to watch, and when the good saint came for the third time, and prepared to throw in the third portion, he was discovered, for the nobleman seized him by the skirt of his robe, and flung himself at his feet, saying, 'O Nicholas! servant of God! why seek to hide thyself?' and he kissed his feet and his hands. But Nicholas made him promise that he would tell no man. And many other charitable works did Nicholas perform in his native city." 43. If we knew from what old chronicle, or from what Professor of the Rue du Fouarre, Dante derived his knowledge of French history, we might possibly make plain the rather difficult passage which begins with this line. The spirit that speaks is not that of the King Hugh Capet, but that of his father, Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris. He was son of Robert the Strong. Pasquier, Rech. de la France, VI. 1, describes him as both valiant and prudent, and says that, 'although he was never king, yet was he a maker and unmaker of kings," and then goes on to draw an elaborate parallel between him and Charles Martel. 66 The "malignant plant" is Philip the Fair, whose character is thus drawn by Milman, Lat. Christ., Book XI. Ch. 8: : "In Philip the Fair the gallantry of the French temperament broke out on rare occasions; his first Flemish cam paigns were conducted with bravery and skill, but Philip ever preferred the subtle negotiation, the slow and wily encroach folly. Never was man or monarch so intensely selfish as Philip the Fair: his own power was his ultimate scope; he extended so enormously the royal prerogative, the influence of France, because he was King of France. His rapacity, which persecuted the Templars, his vin dictiveness, which warred on Boniface after death as through life, was this selfishness in other forms." He was defeated at the battle of Courtray, 1302, known in history as the battle of the Spurs of Gold, from the great number found on the field after the battle. This is the vengeance imprecated upon him by Dante. 50. For two centuries and a half, that is, from 1060 to 1316, there was either a Louis or a Philip on the throne of France. The succession was as follows: Philip I. the Amorous. 1060 1108 1137 1180 1223 1226 1270 1285 1314 is to be taken literally or figuratively. 52. It is doubtful whether this passage Ch. 1 (thinking it is the King Hugh Pasquier, Rech. de la France, Liv. VI. Capet that speaks), breaks forth in indignant protest as follows: "From this you can perceive the fatality there was in this family from its of the Carlovingians. beginning to its end, to the disadvantage And moreover, how ignorant the Italian poet Dante was, when in his book entitled Purgatory he says that our Hugh Capet was the ment; till his enemies were, if not in his son of a butcher. Which word, once power, at least at great disadvantage, he written erroneously and carelessly by did not venture on the usurpation or him, has so crept into the heads of some invasion. In the slow systematic pursuit simpletons, that many who never invesof his object he was utterly without tigated the antiquities of our France have scruple, without remorse. He was not fallen into this same heresy. François so much cruel as altogether obtuse to de Villon, more studious of taverns and human suffering, if necessary to the pro-ale-houses than of good books, says in secution of his schemes; not so much some part of his works, rapacious as, finding money indispensable to his aggrandizement, seeking money by means of which he hardly 'Si feusse les hoirs de Capet seemed to discern the injustice or the And since then Agrippa Alamanni, in his book on the Vanity of Science, chap- carried to England by Hugh the Great, ter Of Nobility, on this first ignorance in 936. The Man in Cloth of Grey redeclares impudently against the genea-mains as great a mystery as the Man in logy of our Capet. If Dante thought the Iron Mask. that Hugh the Great, Capet's father, was a butcher, he was not a clever man. But if he used this expression figuratively, as I am willing to believe, those who cling to the shell of the word are greater block-founder of the Capetian dynasty. heads still... .. "This passage of Dante being read and explained by Luigi Alamanni, an Italian, before Francis the First of that name, he was indignant at the imposture, and commanded it to be stricken out. He was even excited to interdict the reading of the book in his kingdom. But for my part, in order to exculpate this author, I wish to say that under the name of Butcher he meant that Capet was son of a great and valiant warrior. If Dante understood it thus, I forgive him; if otherwise, he was a very ignorant poet." 66 Benvenuto says that the name of Capet comes from the fact that Hugh, in playing with his companions in boyhood, was in the habit of pulling off their caps and running away with them." Ducange repeats this story from an old chronicle, and gives also another and more probable origin of the name, as coming from the hood or cowl which Hugh was in the habit of wearing. The belief that the family descended from a butcher was current in Italy in Dante's time. Villani, IV. 3, says: "Most people say that the father was a great and rich burgher of Paris, of a race of butchers or dealers in cattle." 53. When the Carlovingian race were all dead but one. And who was he? The Ottimo says it was Rudolph, who became a monk and afterwards Archbishop of Rheims. Benvenuto gives no name, but says only a monk in poor, coarse garments." Buti says the same. Daniello thinks it was some Friar of St. Francis, perhaps St. Louis, forgetting that these saints did not see the light till some two centuries after the time here spoken of. Others say Charles of Lorraine; and Biagioli decides that it must be either Charles the Simple, who died a prisoner in the castle of Péronne, in 922; or Louis of Outre-Mer, who was 59. Hugh Capet was crowned at Rheims, in 987. The expression which follows shows clearly that it is Hugh the Great who speaks, and not Hugh the 61. Until the shame of the low origin of the family was removed by the marriage of Charles of Anjou, brother of Saint Louis, to the daughter of Raimond Berenger, who brought him Provence as her dower. 65. Making amends for one crime by committing a greater. The particular transaction here alluded to is the seizing by fraud and holding by force these provinces in the time of Philip the Fair. 67. Charles of Anjou. 68. Curradino, or Conradin. son of the Emperor Conrad IV., a beautiful youth of sixteen, who was beheaded in the square of Naples by order of Charles of Anjou, in 1268. Voltaire, in his rhymed chronology at the end of his Annales de l'Empire, says, "C'est en soixante-huit que la main d'un Dans Conradin son fils éteint un sang si Endeavouring to escape to Sicily after his defeat at Tagliacozzo, he was carried to Naples and imprisoned in the Castel dell' Uovo. "Christendom heard with horror," says Milman, Lat. Christ., Book XI. Ch. 3, "that the royal brother of St. Louis, that the champion of the Church, after a mock trial, by the sentence of one judge, Robert di Lavena,—— after an unanswerable pleading by Guido de Suzaria, a famous jurist,-had condemned the last heir of the Swabian house-a rival king who had fought gallantly for his hereditary throne-to be executed as a felon and a rebel on a public scaffold. So little did Conradin dread his fate, that, when his doom was announced, he was playing at chess with Frederick of Austria. Slave,' said Conradin to Robert of Bari, who read the fatal sentence, 'do you dare to condemn as a criminal the son and heir of kings? Knows not your master that he is my equal, not my judge?' He added, 'I am a mortal, and must die; yet ask the kings of the earth if a prince be criminal for seeking to win back the heritage of his ancestors. But if there be no pardon for me, spare, at least, my faithful companions; or if they must die, strike me first, that I may not behold their death.' They died devoutly, nobly. Every circumstance aggravated the abhorrence; it was said-perhaps it was the invention of that abhorrence-that Robert of Flanders, the brother of Charles, struck dead the judge who had presumed to read the iniquitous sentence. When Conradin knelt, with uplifted hands, awaiting the blow of the execu tioner, he uttered these last words, 'O my mother! how deep will be thy sorrow at the news of this day!' Even the followers of Charles could hardly restrain their pity and indignation. With Conradin died his young and valiant friend, Frederick of Austria, the two Lancias, two of the noble house of Donaticcio of Pisa. The inexorable Charles would not permit them to be buried in consecrated ground." 69. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor of the Schools, died at the convent of Fossa Nuova in the Campagna, being on his way to the Council of Lyons, in 1274. He is supposed to have been poisoned by his physician, at the instigation of Charles of Anjou. 71. Charles of Valois, who came into Italy by invitation of Boniface the Eighth, in 1301. See Inf. VI. 69. 74. There is in old French literature a poem entitled Le Tournoyement de l'Antechrist, written by Hugues de Méry, a monk of the Abbey of St. Germaindes-Prés, in the thirteenth century, in which he describes a battle between the Virtues under the banner of Christ, and the Vices under that of Antichrist. In the Vision of Piers Ploughman, there is a joust between Christ and the foul fiend: "Thanne was Feith in a fenestre, As dooth a heraud of armes, For joye thei songen, Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. "Than I frayned at Feith, What all that fare by-mente, "Who shal juste with Jhesus?' quod I, 'Jewes or scrybes?' Nay,' quod he: The foule fend, And fals doom and deeth.' 75. By the aid of Charles of Valois the Neri party triumphed in Florence, and the Bianchi were banished, and with them Dante. 76. There is an allusion here to the nickname of Charles of Valois, Senzaterra, or Lackland. 79. Charles the Second, son of Charles of Anjou. He went from France to recover Sicily after the Sicilian Vespers. In an engagement with the Spanish fleet under Admiral Rugieri d'Oria, he was taken prisoner. Dante says he sold his daughter, because he married her for a large sum of money to Azzo the Sixth of Este. 82. Æneid, III. 56. "Cursed thirst of gold, to what dost thou not drive the hearts of men." 86. The flower-de-luce is in the banner of France. Borel, Tresor de Recherches, cited by Roquefort, Glossaire, under the word Leye, says: "The oriflamme is so called from gold and flame; that is to say, a lily of the marshes. The lilies are the arms of France on a field of azure, which denotes water, in memory that they (the French) came from a marshy country. It is the most ancient and principal banner of France, sown with these lilies, and was borne around our kings on great occasions." Roquefort gives his own opinion as follows: "The Franks, afterwards called French, inhabited (before entering Gaul properly so called) the environs of the Lys, a river of the Low Countries, whose banks are still covered with a kind of iris or flag of a yellow colour, which differs from the common lily and more nearly resembles the flower-de-luce of our arms. Now it seems to me very natural that the kings of the Franks, having to choose a symbol to which the name of armorial bearings has since been given, should take in its composition a beautiful and remarkable flower, which they had before their eyes, and that they should 87. This passage alludes to the seizure and imprisonment of Pope Boniface the Eighth by the troops of Philip the Fair at Alagna or Anagni, in 1303. Milman, Lat. Christ., Book XI. Ch. 9, thus describes the event : "On a sudden, on the 7th September (the 8th was the day for the publication of the Bull), the peaceful streets of Anagni were disturbed. The Pope and the Cardinals, who were all assembled around him, were startled with the tram pling of armed horse, and the terrible cry, which ran like wildfire through the city, Death to Pope Boniface! Long live the King of France!' Sciarra Colonna, at the head of three hundred horsemen, the Barons of Cercano and Supino, and some others, the sons of Master Massio of Anagni, were marching in furious haste, with the banner of the king of France displayed. The ungrateful citizens of Anagni, forgetful of their pride in their holy compatriot, of the honour and advantage to their town from the splendour and wealth of the Papal residence, received them with rebellious and acclaiming shouts. "The bell of the city, indeed, had tolled at the first alarm; the burghers had assembled; they had chosen their commander; but that commander, whom they ignorantly or treacherously chose, was Arnulf, a deadly enemy of the Pope. The banner of the Church was unfolded against the Pope by the captain of the people of Anagni. The first attack was on the palace of the Pope, on that of the Marquis Gaetani, his nephew, and those of three Cardinals, the special partisans of Boniface. The houses of the Pope and of his nephew made some resistance. The doors of those of the Cardinals were beaten down, the treasures ransacked and carried off; the Cardinals themselves fled from the backs of the houses through the common sewer. Then arrived, but not to the rescue, Arnulf, the Captain of the People; he had perhaps been suborned by Reginald of Supino. With him were the sons of Chiton, whose father was pining in the dungeons of Boniface. Instead of resisting, they joined the attack on the palace of the Pope s nephew and his own. The Pope and his nephew implored a truce; it was granted for eight hours. This time the Pope employed in endeavouring to stir up the people to his defence; the people coldly answered, that they were under the command of their Captain. The Pope demanded the terms of the conspirators. If the Pope would save his life, let him instantly restore the Colonna Cardinals to their dignity, and reinstate the whole house in their honours and possessions; after this restoration the Pope must abdicate, and leave his body at the disposal of Sciarra.' The Pope groaned in the depths of his heart. The word is spoken.' Again the assailants thundered at the gates of the palace; still there was obstinate resistance. The principal church of Anagni, that of Santa Maria, protected the Pope's palace. Sciarra Colonna's lawless band set fire to the gates; the church_was_crowded with clergy and laity and traders who had brought their precious wares into the sacred building. They were plundered with such rapacity that not a man escaped with a farthing. "The Marquis found himself compelled to surrender, on the condition that his own life, that of his family and of his servants, should be spared. At these sad tidings the Pope wept bitterly. The Pope was alone; from the first the Cardinals, some from treachery, some from cowardice, had fled on all sides, even his most familiar friends: they had crept into the most ignoble hiding-places. The aged Pontiff alone lost not his selfcommand. He had declared himself ready to perish in his glorious cause; he determined to fall with dignity. If I am betrayed like Christ, I am ready to die like Christ.' He put on the stole of St. Peter, the imperial crown was on his head, the keys of St. Peter in one hand and the cross in the other: he took his seat on the l'apal throne, and, like the |