FOOTNOTES:
[610] Minor Friars: In the early years of their Order the Franciscans went in couples upon their journeys, not abreast but one behind the other.
[611] Æsop’s fable: This fable, mistakenly attributed to Æsop, tells of how a frog enticed a mouse into a pond, and how they were then both devoured by a kite. To discover the aptness of the simile would scarcely be reward enough for the continued mental effort Dante enjoins. So much was everything Greek or Roman then held in reverence, that the mention even of Æsop is held to give dignity to the page.
[612] Mo and Issa: Two words for now.
[613] Through us: The quarrel among the fiends arose from Dante’s insatiable desire to confer with ‘Tuscan or Lombard.’
[614] To the next Bolgia: The Sixth. They are now on the top of the circular ridge that divides it from the Fifth. From the construction of Malebolge the ridge is deeper on the inner side than on that up which they have travelled from the pitch.
[615] No more a cause of dread: There seems some incongruity between Virgil’s dread of these smaller devils and the ease with which he cowed Minos, Charon, and Pluto. But his character gains in human interest the more he is represented as sympathising with Dante in his terrors; and in this particular case the confession of fellow-feeling prepares the way for the beautiful passage which follows it (line 38, etc.), one full of an almost modern tenderness.
[616] Cologne: Some make it Clugny, the great Benedictine monastery; but all the old commentators and most of the mss. read Cologne. All that the text necessarily carries is that the cloaks had great hoods. If, in addition, a reproach of clumsiness is implied, it would agree well enough with the Italian estimate of German people and things.
[617] Frederick’s, etc.: The Emperor Frederick II.; but that he used any torture of leaden sheets seems to be a fabrication of his enemies.
[618] Passage strait: Through the crowd of shades, all like themselves weighed down by the leaden cloaks. There is nothing in all literature like this picture of the heavily-burdened shades. At first sight it seems to be little of a torture compared with what we have already seen, and yet by simple touch after touch an impression is created of the intolerable weariness of the victims. As always, too, the punishment answers to the sin. The hypocrites made a fair show in the flesh, and now their mantles which look like gold are only of base lead. On earth they were of a sad countenance, trying to seem better than they were, and the load which to deceive others they voluntarily assumed in life is now replaced by a still heavier weight, and one they cannot throw off if they would. The choice of garb conveys an obvious charge of hypocrisy against the Friars, then greatly fallen away from the purity of their institution, whether Franciscans or Dominicans.
[619] An eye askance: They cannot turn their heads.
[620] His heaving throat: In Purgatory Dante is known for a mortal by his casting a shadow. Here he is known to be of flesh and blood by the act of respiration; yet, as appears from line 113, the shades, too, breathe as well as perform other functions of living bodies. At least they seem so to do, but this is all only in appearance. They only seem to be flesh and blood, having no weight, casting no shadow, and drawing breath in a way of their own. Dante, as has been said (Inf. vi. 36), is hard put to it to make them subject to corporal pains and yet be only shadows.
[621] Merry Friars: Knights of the Order of Saint Mary, instituted by Urban IV. in 1261. Whether the name of Frati Godenti which they here bear was one of reproach or was simply descriptive of the easy rule under which they lived, is not known. Married men might, under certain conditions, enter the Order. The members were to hold themselves aloof from public office, and were to devote themselves to the defence of the weak and the promotion of justice and religion. The two monkish cavaliers of the text were in 1266 brought to Florence as Podestas, the Pope himself having urged them to go. There is much uncertainty as to the part they played in Florence, but none as to the fact of their rule having been highly distasteful to the Florentines, or as to the other fact, that in Florence they grew wealthy. The Podesta, or chief magistrate, was always a well-born foreigner. Probably some monkish rule or custom forbade either Catalano or Loderingo to leave the monastery singly.
[622] Gardingo: A quarter of Florence, in which many palaces were destroyed about the time of the Podestaship of the Frati.
[623] One man as victim: St. John xi. 50. Caiaphas and Annas, with the Scribes and Pharisees who persecuted Jesus to the death, are the vilest hypocrites of all. They lie naked across the path, unburdened by the leaden cloak, it is true, but only that they may feel the more keenly the weight of the punishment of all the hypocrites of the world.
[624] Virgil: On Virgil’s earlier journey through Inferno Caiaphas and the others were not here, and he wonders as at something out of a world to him unknown.
[625] On the right: As they are moving round the Bolgia to the left, the rocky barrier between them and the Seventh Bolgia is on their right.
[626] We, both of us: Dante, still in the body, as well as Virgil, the shade.
[627] The encircling wall: That which encloses all the Malebolge.
[628] He warned us: Malacoda (Inf. xxi. 109) had assured him that the next rib of rock ran unbroken across all the Bolgias, but it too, like all the other bridges, proves to have been, at the time of the earthquake, shattered where it crossed this gulf of the hypocrites. The earthquake told most on this Bolgia, because the death of Christ and the attendant earthquake were, in a sense, caused by the hypocrisy of Caiaphas and the rest.
[629] At Bologna: Even in Inferno the Merry Friar must have his joke. He is a gentleman, but a bit of a scholar too; and the University of Bologna is to him what Marischal College was to Captain Dalgetty.
CANTO XXIV.
In season of the new year, when the sun
Beneath Aquarius[630] warms again his hair,
And somewhat on the nights the days have won;
When on the ground the hoar-frost painteth fair
A mimic image of her sister white—
But soon her brush of colour is all bare—
The clown, whose fodder is consumed outright,
Rises and looks abroad, and, all the plain
Beholding glisten, on his thigh doth smite.
Returned indoors, like wretch that seeks in vain10
What he should do, restless he mourns his case;
But hope revives when, looking forth again,
He sees the earth anew has changed its face.
Then with his crook he doth himself provide,
And straightway doth his sheep to pasture chase:
So at my Master was I terrified,
His brows beholding troubled; nor more slow
To where I ailed[631] the plaster was applied.
For when the broken bridge[632] we stood below
My Guide turned to me with the expression sweet20
Which I beneath the mountain learned to know.
His arms he opened, after counsel meet
Held with himself, and, scanning closely o’er
The fragments first, he raised me from my feet;
And like a man who, working, looks before,
With foresight still on that in front bestowed,
Me to the summit of a block he bore
And then to me another fragment showed,
Saying: ‘By this thou now must clamber on;
But try it first if it will bear thy load.’30
The heavy cowled[633] this way could ne’er have gone,
For hardly we, I holpen, he so light,
Could clamber up from shattered stone to stone.
And but that on the inner bank the height
Of wall is not so great, I say not he,
But for myself I had been vanquished quite.
But Malebolge[634] to the cavity
Of the deep central pit is planned to fall;
Hence every Bolgia in its turn must be
High on the out, low on the inner wall;40
So to the summit we attained at last,
Whence breaks away the topmost stone[635] of all.
My lungs were so with breathlessness harassed,
The summit won, I could no further go;
And, hardly there, me on the ground I cast
‘Well it befits that thou shouldst from thee throw
All sloth,’ the Master said; ‘for stretched in down
Or under awnings none can glory know.
And he who spends his life nor wins renown
Leaves in the world no more enduring trace50
Than smoke in air, or foam on water blown.
Therefore arise; o’ercome thy breathlessness
By force of will, victor in every fight
When not subservient to the body base.
Of stairs thou yet must climb a loftier flight:[636]
’Tis not enough to have ascended these.
Up then and profit if thou hear’st aright.’
Rising I feigned to breathe with greater ease
Than what I felt, and spake: ‘Now forward plod,
For with my courage now my strength agrees.’60
Up o’er the rocky rib we held our road;
And rough it was and difficult and strait,
And steeper far[637] than that we earlier trod.
Speaking I went, to hide my wearied state,
When from the neighbouring moat a voice we heard
Which seemed ill fitted to articulate.
Of what it said I knew not any word,
Though on the arch[638] that vaults the moat set high;
But he who spake appeared by anger stirred.
Though I bent downward yet my eager eye,70
So dim the depth, explored it all in vain;
I then: ‘O Master, to that bank draw nigh,
And let us by the wall descent obtain,
Because I hear and do not understand,
And looking down distinguish nothing plain.’
‘My sole reply to thee,’ he answered bland,
‘Is to perform; for it behoves,’ he said,
‘With silent act to answer just demand.’
Then we descended from the bridge’s head,[639]
Where with the eighth bank is its junction wrought;80
And full beneath me was the Bolgia spread.
And I perceived that hideously ’twas fraught
With serpents; and such monstrous forms they bore,
Even now my blood is curdled at the thought.
Henceforth let sandy Libya boast no more!
Though she breed hydra, snake that crawls or flies,
Twy-headed, or fine-speckled, no such store
Of plagues, nor near so cruel, she supplies,
Though joined to all the land of Ethiop,
And that which by the Red Sea waters lies.90
’Midst this fell throng and dismal, without hope
A naked people ran, aghast with fear—
No covert for them and no heliotrope.[640]
Their hands[641] were bound by serpents at their rear,
Which in their reins for head and tail did get
A holding-place: in front they knotted were.
And lo! to one who on our side was set
A serpent darted forward, him to bite
At where the neck is by the shoulders met.
Nor O nor I did any ever write100
More quickly than he kindled, burst in flame,
And crumbled all to ashes. And when quite
He on the earth a wasted heap became,
The ashes[642] of themselves together rolled,
Resuming suddenly their former frame.
Thus, as by mighty sages we are told,
The Phœnix[643] dies, and then is born again,
When it is close upon five centuries old.
In all its life it eats not herb nor grain,
But only tears that from frankincense flow;110
It, for a shroud, sweet nard and myrrh contain.
And as the man who falls and knows not how,
By force of demons stretched upon the ground,
Or by obstruction that makes life run low,
When risen up straight gazes all around
In deep confusion through the anguish keen
He suffered from, and stares with sighs profound:
So was the sinner, when arisen, seen.
Justice of God, how are thy terrors piled,
Showering in vengeance blows thus big with teen!120
My Guide then asked of him how he was styled.
Whereon he said: ‘From Tuscany I rained,
Not long ago, into this gullet wild.
From bestial life, not human, joy I gained,
Mule that I was; me, Vanni Fucci,[644] brute,
Pistoia, fitting den, in life contained.’
I to my Guide: ‘Bid him not budge a foot,
And ask[645] what crime has plunged him here below.
In rage and blood I knew him dissolute.’
The sinner heard, nor insincere did show,130
But towards me turned his face and eke his mind,
With spiteful shame his features all aglow;
Then said: ‘It pains me more thou shouldst me find
And catch me steeped in all this misery,
Than when the other life I left behind.
What thou demandest I can not deny:
I’m plunged[646] thus low because the thief I played
Within the fairly furnished sacristy;
And falsely to another’s charge ’twas laid.
Lest thou shouldst joy[647] such sight has met thy view
If e’er these dreary regions thou evade,141
Give ear and hearken to my utterance true:
The Neri first out of Pistoia fail,
Her laws and parties Florence shapes anew;
Mars draws a vapour out of Magra’s vale,
Which black and threatening clouds accompany:
Then bursting in a tempest terrible
Upon Piceno shall the war run high;
The mist by it shall suddenly be rent,
And every Bianco[648] smitten be thereby:150
And I have told thee that thou mayst lament.’