[708] For Christian, etc.: The foes of Boniface, here spoken of, were the Cardinals Peter and James Colonna. He destroyed their palace in Rome (1297) and carried the war against them to their country seat at Palestrina, the ancient Præneste, then a great stronghold. Dante here bitterly blames Boniface for instituting a crusade against Christians at a time when, by the recent loss of Acre, the gate of the Holy Land had been lost to Christendom. The Colonnas were innocent, too, of the crime of supplying the Infidel with munitions of war—a crime condemned by the Lateran Council of 1215, and by Boniface himself, who excluded those guilty of it from the benefits of the great Jubilee of 1300.
[709] Which used, etc.: In former times, when the rule of the Order was faithfully observed. Dante charges the Franciscans with degeneracy in the Paradiso, xi. 124.
[710] From Soracte: Referring to the well-known legend. The fee for the cure was the fabulous Donation. See Inf. xix. 115.
[711] My predecessor: Celestine v. See Inf. iii. 60.
[712] The scant performance, etc.: That Guido gave such counsel is related by a contemporary chronicler: ‘The Pope said: Tell me how to get the better of those mine enemies, thou who art so knowing in these things. Then he answered: Promise much, and perform little; which he did.’ But it seems odd that the wily and unscrupulous Boniface should have needed to put himself to school for such a simple lesson.
[713] Thou didst not think, etc.: Guido had forgot that others could reason besides the Pope. With regard to the inefficacy of the Papal absolution an old commentator says, following Origen: ‘The Popes that walk in the footsteps of Peter have this power of binding and loosing; but only such as do so walk.’ But on Dante’s scheme of what fixes the fate of the soul absolution matters little to save, or priestly curses to damnify. See Purg. iii. 133. It is unfeigned repentance that can help a sinner even at the last; and it is remarkable that in the case of Buonconte, the gallant son of this same Guido, the infernal angel who comes for him as he expires complains that he has been cheated of his victim by one poor tear. See Purg. v. 88, etc. Why then is no indulgence shown in Dante’s court to Guido, who might well have been placed in Purgatory and made to have repented effectually of this his last sin? That Dante had any personal grudge against him we can hardly think. In the Fourth Book of the Convito (written, according to Fraticelli, in 1297), he calls him ‘our most noble Guido Montefeltrano;’ and praises him as one of the wise and noble souls that refuse to run with full sails into the port of death, but furl the sails of their worldly undertakings, and, relinquishing all earthly pleasures and business, give themselves up in their old age to a religious life. Either, then, he sets Guido here in order that he may have a modern false counsellor worthy to be ranked with Ulysses; or because, on longer experience, he had come to reprobate more keenly the abuse of the Franciscan habit; or, most likely of all, that he might, even at the cost of Guido, load the hated memory of Boniface with another reproach.
[714] Minos: Here we have Minos represented in the act of pronouncing judgment in words as well as by the figurative rolling of his tail around his body (Inf. v. 11).