Purgatorio

Canto XX

Hugh Capet—The earthquake.

Ill strives the will against a better will;¹Therefore, to pleasure him, against my pleasure²I drew the sponge not saturate from the water.Onward I moved, and onward moved my Leader,Through vacant places, skirting still the rock,As on a wall close to the battlements;For they that through their eyes pour drop by dropThe malady which all the world pervades,On the other side too near the verge approach.Accursed mayst thou be, thou old she-wolf,That more than all the other beasts hast prey,Because of hunger infinitely hollow!O heaven, in whose gyrations some appear³To think conditions here below are changed,When will he come through whom she shall depart?⁴Onward we went with footsteps slow and scarce,And I attentive to the shades I heardPiteously weeping and bemoaning them;And I by peradventure heard “Sweet Mary!”Uttered in front of us amid the weepingEven as a woman does who is in child-birth;And in continuance: “How poor thou wastIs manifested by that hostelry⁵Where thou didst lay thy sacred burden down.”Thereafterward I heard: “O good Fabricius,⁶Virtue with poverty didst thou preferTo the possession of great wealth with vice.”So pleasurable were these words to meThat I drew farther onward to have knowledgeTouching that spirit whence they seemed to come.He furthermore was speaking of the largess⁷Which Nicholas unto the maidens gave,⁸In order to conduct their youth to honor.“O soul that dost so excellently speak,Tell me who wast thou,” said I, “and why onlyThou dost renew these praises well deserved?Not without recompense shall be thy word,If I return to finish the short journeyOf that life which is flying to its end.”And he: “I’ll tell thee, not for any comfortI may expect from earth, but that so muchGrace shines in thee or ever thou art dead.I was the root of that malignant plant⁹Which overshadows all the Christian world,So that good fruit is seldom gathered from it;But if Douay and Ghent, and Lille and BrugesHad power, soon vengeance would be taken on it;And this I pray of Him who judges all.Hugh Capet was I called upon the earth;From me were born the Louises and Philips,¹⁰By whom in later days has France been governed.I was the son of a Parisian butcher,¹¹What time the ancient kings had perished all,¹²Excepting one, contrite in cloth of gray.I found me grasping in my hands the reinOf the realm’s government, and so great powerOf new acquest, and so with friends abounding,That to the widowed diadem promotedThe head of mine own offspring was, from whom¹³The consecrated bones of these began.So long as the great dowry of Provence¹⁴Out of my blood took not the sense of shame,’Twas little worth, but still it did no harm.Then it began with falsehood and with forceIts rapine; and thereafter, for amends,¹⁵Took Ponthieu, Normandy, and Gascony.Charles came to Italy, and for amends¹⁶A victim made of Conradin, and then¹⁷Thrust Thomas back to heaven, for amends.¹⁸A time I see, not very distant now,Which draweth forth another Charles from France,¹⁹The better to make known both him and his.Unarmed he goes, and only with the lanceThat Judas jousted with; and that he thrusts²⁰So that he makes the paunch of Florence burst.²¹He thence not land, but sin and infamy,²²Shall gain, so much more grievous to himselfAs the more light such damage he accounts.The other, now gone forth, ta’en in his ship,²³See I his daughter sell, and chaffer for herAs corsairs do with other female slaves.What more, O Avarice, canst thou do to us,²⁴Since thou my blood so to thyself hast drawn,It careth not for its own proper flesh?That less may seem the future ill and past,I see the flower-de-luce Alagna enter,²⁵And Christ in his own Vicar captive made.²⁶I see him yet another time derided;I see renewed the vinegar and gall,And between living thieves I see him slain.I see the modern Pilate so relentless,²⁷This does not sate him, but without decretalHe to the temple bears his sordid sails!When, O my Lord! shall I be joyful madeBy looking on the vengeance which, concealed,Makes sweet thine anger in thy secrecy?What I was saying of that only bride²⁸Of the Holy Ghost, and which occasioned theeTo turn towards me for some commentary,So long has been ordained to all our prayersAs the day lasts; but when the night comes on,Contrary sound we take instead thereof.At that time we repeat Pygmalion,²⁹Of whom a traitor, thief, and parricideMade his insatiable desire of gold;And the misery of avaricious Midas,³⁰That followed his inordinate demand,At which forevermore one needs but laugh.The foolish Achan each one then records,³¹And how he stole the spoils; so that the wrathOf Joshua still appears to sting him here.Then we accuse Sapphira with her husband,³²We laud the hoof-beats Heliodorus had,³³And the whole mount in infamy encirclesPolymnestor who murdered Polydorus.³⁴Here finally is cried: ‘O Crassus, tell us,³⁵For thou dost know, what is the taste of gold?’Sometimes we speak, one loud, another low,According to desire of speech, that spurs usTo greater now and now to lesser pace.But in the good that here by day is talked of,Erewhile alone I was not; yet near by³⁶No other person lifted up his voice.”From him already we departed were,And made endeavor to o’ercome the roadAs much as was permitted to our power,When I perceived, like something that is falling,The mountain tremble, whence a chill seized on me,³⁷As seizes him who to his death is going.Certes so violently shook not Delos,³⁸Before Latona made her nest thereinTo give birth to the two eyes of the heaven.Then upon all sides there began a cry,Such that the Master drew himself towards me,Saying, “Fear not, while I am guiding thee.”“Gloria in excelsis Deo,” all³⁹Were saying, from what near I comprehended,Where it was possible to hear the cry.We paused immovable and in suspense,Even as the shepherds who first heard that song,⁴⁰Until the trembling ceased, and it was finished.Then we resumed again our holy path,Watching the shades that lay upon the ground,Already turned to their accustomed plaint.No ignorance ever with so great a strifeHad rendered me importunate to know,If erreth not in this my memory,As meditating then I seemed to have;Nor out of haste to question did I dare,Nor of myself I there could aught perceive;So I went onward timorous and thoughtful.

In this canto the subject of the preceding is continued, namely, the punishment of Avarice and Prodigality. ↩
To please the speaker. Pope Adrian the Fifth, (who, Canto XIX 139, says, “Now go, no longer will I have thee linger,”) Dante departs without further question, though not yet satisfied. ↩
See the article “Cabala” at the end of Vol. III. ↩
This is generally supposed to refer to Can Grande della Scala. See note 22. ↩
The inn at Bethlehem. ↩
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, Aeneid, VI 844, calls him “powerful in poverty.” Dante also extols him in the Convito, IV 5. ↩
Gower, Confessio Amantis, V 13:— “Betwene the two extremites / Of vice stont the propertes / Of vertue, and to prove it so / Take avarice and take also / The vice of prodegalite, / Betwene hem liberalite, / Which is the vertue of largesse / Stant and governeth his noblesse.” ↩
This is St. Nicholas, patron saint of children, sailors, and travellers. The 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 to an infamous life; and oftentimes it came into his mind to tell them so, but shame and sorrow held him dumb. Meantime the maidens wept continually, not knowing what to do, and not having bread to eat; 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 the poor man. He considered how he 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 Nicholas 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.” ↩
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 i, 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. The “malignant plant” is Philip the Fair, whose character is thus drawn by Milman, History of Latin Christianity, Book XI Ch. 8:— “In Philip the Fair the gallantry of the French temperament broke out on rare occasions; his first Flemish campaigns were conducted with bravery and skill, but Philip ever preferred the subtle negotiation, the slow and wily encroachment; till his enemies were, if not in his power, at least at great disadvantage, he did not venture on the usurpation or invasion. In the slow systematic pursuit of his object he was utterly without scruple, without remorse. He was not so much cruel as altogether obtuse to human suffering, if necessary to the prosecution of his schemes; not so much rapacious as, finding money indispensable to his aggrandizement, seeking money by means of which he hardly seemed to discern the injustice or the 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 vindictiveness, 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. ↩
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 . Louis VI the Fat, 1108 . Louis VII the Young, 1137 . Philip II Augustus, 1180 . Louis VIII the Lion, 1223 . Louis IX the Saint, 1226 . Philip III the Bold, 1270 . Philip IV the Fair, 1285 . Louis X , 1314 . ↩
It is doubtful whether this passage is to be taken literally or figuratively. Pasquier, Rech. de la France, Liv. VI Ch. I (thinking it is the King Hugh Capet that speaks), breaks forth in indignant protest as follows:— “From this you can perceive the fatality there was in this family from its beginning to its end, to the disadvantage of the Carlovingians. And moreover, how ignorant the Italian poet Dante was, when in his book entitled Purgatory he says that our Hugh Capet was the son of a butcher. Which word, once written erroneously and carelessly by him, has so crept into the heads of some simpletons, that many who never investigated the antiquities of our France have fallen into this same heresy. François de Villon, more studious of taverns and alehouses than of good books, says in some part of his works, “Si feusse les hoirs de Capet / Qui fut extrait de boucherie.” And since then Agrippa Alamanni, in his book on the Vanity of Science, chapter “Of Nobility,” on this first ignorance declares impudently against the genealogy of our Capet. If Dante thought 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 blockheads 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.” 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.” ↩
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 Rhcims. Bcnvenuto 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 Peronne, in 922; or Louis of Outré-Mer, who was carried to England by Hugh the Great, in 936, The Man in Cloth of Gray remains as great a mystery as the Man in the Iron Mask. ↩
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 founder of the Capetian dynasty. ↩
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. ↩
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. ↩
Charles of Anjou. ↩
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 bourreau / Dans Conradin son fils éteint un sang si beau.” Endeavoring to escape to Sicily after his defeat at Tagliacozzo, he was carried to Naples and imprisoned in the Castel deir Uovo. “Christendom heard with horror,” says Milman, History of Latin Christianity, 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 executioner, 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.” ↩
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. ↩
Charles of Valois, who came into Italy by invitation of Boniface the Eighth, in 1301. See Inferno VI 69. ↩
There is in old French literature a poem entitled Le Tournoyement de l’Antechrist, written by Hugues de Mery, a monk of the Abbey of St. Germain-des-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, / And cryde a fili David, / As dooth an heraud of armes, / Whan aventrous cometh to justes. / Old Jewes of Jerusalem / For joye thei songen, / Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. / “Thanne I frayned at Feith, / What al that fare by-mente, / And who sholde juste in Jerusalem. / ‘Jhesus,’ he seide, / ‘And fecche that the fend claymeth, / Piers fruyt the Plowman.’ / ⋮ / “ ‘Who shal juste with Jhesus?’ quod I, / ‘Jewes or scrybes?’ / “ ‘Nay,’ quod he; ‘The foule fend, / And fals doom and deeth.’ ” ↩
By the aid of Charles of Valois the Neri party triumphed in Florence, and the Bianchi were banished, and with them Dante. ↩
There is an allusion here to the nickname of Charles of Valois, Senzaterra, or Lackland. ↩
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. ↩
Aeneid, III 56. “Cursed thirst of gold, to what dost thou not drive the hearts of men.” ↩
The flower-de-luce is in the banner of France. Borel, Trésor 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 in 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 color, 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 name it, from the place where it grew in abundance, flower of the river Lys.” These are the lilies of which Drayton speaks in his “Ballad of Agincourt”:— “… when our grandsire great, / Claiming the regal seat, / By many a warlike feat / Lopped the French lilies.” ↩
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, History of Latin Christianity, 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 trampling 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 honor and advantage to their town from the splendor 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 endeavoring 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 honors 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 self-command. 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 Papal throne, and, like the Roman Senators of old, awaited the approach of the Gaul. “But the pride and cruelty of Boniface had raised and infixed deep in the hearts of men passions which acknowledged no awe of age, of intrepidity, or religious majesty. In William of Nogaret the blood or his Tolosan ancestors, in Colonna, the wrongs, the degradation, the beggary, the exile of all his house, had extinguished every feeling but revenge. They insulted him with contumelious reproaches; they menaced his life. The Pope answered not a word. They insisted that he should at once abdicate the Papacy. ‘Behold my neck, behold my head,’ was the only reply. But fiercer words passed between the Pope and William of Nogaret. Nogaret threatened to drag him before the Council of Lyons, where he should be deposed from the Papacy. ‘Shall I suffer myself to be degraded and deposed by Paterins like thee, whose fathers were righteously burned as Paterins?’ William turned fiery red, with shame thought the partisans of Boniface, more likely with wrath. Sciarra, it was said, would have slain him outright; he was prevented by some of his own followers, even by Nogaret. ‘Wretched Pope, even at this distance the goodness of my Lord the King guards thy life.’ “He was placed under close custody, not one of his own attendants permitted to approach him. Worse indignities awaited him. He was set on a vicious horse, with his face to the tail, and so led through the town to his place of imprisonment. The palaces of the Pope and of his nephew were plundered; so vast was the wealth, that the annual revenues of all the kings in the world would not have been equal to the treasures found and carried off by Sciarra’s freebooting soldiers. His very private chamber was ransacked; nothing left but bare walls. “At length the people of Anagni could no longer bear the insult and the sufferings heaped upon their illustrious and holy fellow-citizen. They rose in irresistible insurrection, drove out the soldiers by whom they had been overawed, now gorged with plunder, and doubtless not unwilling to withdraw. The Pope was rescued, and led out into the street, where the old man addressed a few words to the people: ‘Good men and women, ye see how mine enemies have come upon me, and plundered my goods, those of the Church and of the poor. Not a morsel of bread have I eaten, not a drop have I drunk, since my capture. I am almost dead with hunger. If any good woman will give me a piece of bread and a cup of wine, if she has no wine, a little water, I will absolve her, and any one who will give me their alms, from all their sins.’ The compassionate rabble burst into a cry, ‘Long life to the Pope!’ They carried him back to his naked palace. They crowded, the women especially, with provisions, bread, meat, water, and wine. They could not find a single vessel: they poured a supply of water into a chest. The Pope proclaimed a general absolution to all except the plunderers of his palace. He even declared that he wished to be at peace with the Colonnas and all his enemies. This perhaps was to disguise his intention of retiring, as soon as he could, to Rome. “The Romans had heard with indignation the sacrilegious attack on the person of the Supreme Pontiff. Four hundred horse under Matteo and Gaetano Orsini were sent to conduct him to the city. He entered it almost in triumph; the populace welcomed him with every demonstration of joy. But the awe of his greatness was gone; the spell of his dominion over the minds of men was broken. His overweening haughtiness and domination had made him many enemies in the Sacred College, the gold of France had made him more. This general revolt is his severest condemnation. Among his first enemies was the Cardinal Napoleon Orsini. Orsini had followed the triumphal entrance of the Pope. Boniface, to show that he desired to reconcile himself with all, courteously invited him to his table. The Orsini coldly answered, ‘that he must receive the Colonna Cardinals into his favor; he must not now disown what had been wrung from him by compulsion.’ ‘I will pardon them,’ said Boniface, ‘but the mercy of the Pope is not to be from compulsion.’ He found himself again a prisoner. “This last mortification crushed the bodily, if not the mental strength of the Pope. Among the Ghibellines terrible stories were bruited abroad of his death. In an access of fury, either from poison or wounded pride, he sat gnawing the top of his staff, and at length either beat out his own brains against the wall, or smothered himself (a strange notion!) with his own pillows. More friendly, probably more trustworthy, accounts describe him as sadly but quietly breathing his last, surrounded by eight Cardinals, having confessed the faith and received the consoling offices of the Church. The Cardinal-Poet anticipates his mild sentence from the Divine Judge. “The religious mind of Christendom was at once perplexed and horror-stricken by this act of sacrilegious violence on the person of the Supreme Pontiff; it shocked some even of the sternest Ghibellines. Dante, who brands the pride, the avarice, the treachery of Boniface in his most terrible words, and has consigned him to the direst doom, (though it is true that his alliance with the French, with Charles of Valois, by whom the poet had been driven into exile, was among the deepest causes of his hatred to Boniface,) nevertheless expresses the almost universal feeling. Christendom shuddered to behold the Fleur-de-lis enter into Anagni, and Christ again captive in his Vicar, the mockery, the gall and vinegar, the crucifixion between living robbers, the insolent and sacrilegious cruelty of the second Pilate.” Compare this scene with that of his inauguration as Pope, note 270. ↩
This “modern Pilate” is Philip the Fair, and the allusion in the following lines is to the persecution and suppression of the Order of the Knights Templars, in 1307—1312. See Milman, History of Latin Christianity, Book XII Ch. 2, and Villani, VIII 92, who says the act was committed per cupidigia di guadagnare, for love of gain; and says also:— “The king of France and his children had afterwards much shame and adversity, both on account of this sin and on account of the seizure of Pope Boniface.” ↩
What he was saying of the Virgin Mary, line 19. ↩
The brother of Dido and murderer of her husband. Aeneid, I 350: “He, impious and blinded with the love of gold, having taken Sichrcus by surprise, secretly assassinates him before the altar, regardless of his sister’s great affection.” ↩
The Phrygian king, who, for his hospitality to Silenus, was endowed by Bacchus with the fatal power of turning all he touched to gold. The most laughable thing about him was his wearing ass’s ears, as a punishment for preferring the music of Pan to that of Apollo. Ovid, XI, Croxall’s Tr.:— “Pan tuned the pipe, and with his rural song / Pleased the low taste of all the vulgar throng; / Such songs a vulgar judgment mostly please: / Midas was there, and Midas judged with these.” See also Hawthorne’s story of “The Golden Touch” in his Wonder-Book. ↩
Joshua 7:21:— “When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.” ↩
Acts 5:1, 2:— “But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, and kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” ↩
The hoof-beats of the miraculous horse in the Temple of Jerusalem, when Heliodorus, the treasurer of King Sclcucus, went there to remove the treasure. 2 Maccabees 3:25:— “For there appeared unto them an horse with a terrible rider upon him, and adorned with a very fair covering, and he ran fiercely, and smote at Heliodorus with his forefeet, and it seemed that he that sat upon the horse had complete harness of gold.” ↩
Aeneid, III 49, Davidson’s Tr.:— “This Polydore unhappy Priam had formerly sent in secrecy, with a great weight of gold, to be brought up by the king of Thrace, when he now began to distrust the arms of Troy, and saw the city with close siege blocked up. He, [Polymnestor,] as soon as the power of the Trojans was crushed, and their fortune gone, espousing Agamemnon’s interest and victorious arms, breaks every sacred bond, assassinates Polydore, and by violence possesses his gold. Cursed thirst of gold, to what dost thou not drive the hearts of men!” ↩
Lucinius Crassus, surnamed the Rich. He was Consul with Pompey, and on one occasion displayed his vast wealth by giving an entertainment to the populace, at which the guests were so numerous that they occupied ten thousand tables. He was slain in a battle with the Parthians, and his head was sent to the Parthian king, Hyrodes, who had molten gold poured down its throat. Plutarch does not mention this circumstance in his Life of Crassus, but says:— “When the head of Crassus was brought to the door, the tables were just taken away, and one Jason, a tragic actor of the town of Tralles, was singing the scene in the Bacchac of Euripides concerning Agave. He was receiving much applause, when Sillaces coming to the room, and having made obeisance to the king, threw down the head of Crassus into the midst of the company. The Parthians receiving it with joy and acclamations, Sillaces, by the king’s command, was made to sit down, while Jason handed over the costume of Pentheus to one of the dancers in the chorus, and taking up the head of Crassus, and acting the part of a bacchante in her frenzy, in a rapturous, impassioned manner, sang the lyric passages, ‘We’ve hunted down a mighty chase to-day, / And from the mountain bring the noble prey.’ ” ↩
This is in answer to Dante’s question, line 35:— “And why only / Thou dost renew these praises well deserved?” ↩
The occasion of this quaking of the mountain is given. Canto XXI 58:— “It trembles here, whenever any soul / Feels itself pure, so that it soars, or moves / To mount aloft, and such a cry attends it.” ↩
An island in the Aegean Sea, in the centre of the Cyclades. It was thrown up by an earthquake, in order to receive Latona, when she gave birth to Apollo and Diana—the Sun and the Moon. ↩
Luke 2:13, 14:— “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” ↩
Gower, Confessio Amantis, III 5:— “When Goddes sone also was bore, / He sent his aungel down therfore, / Whom the shepherdes herden singe: / Pees to the men of welwillinge / In erthe be amonge us here.” ↩