[538] That bank, etc.: Of each Bolgia the inner bank is lower than the outer; the whole of Malebolge sloping towards the centre of the Inferno.
[539] Like a friar, etc.: In those times the punishment of an assassin was to be stuck head downward in a pit, and then to have earth slowly shovelled in till he was suffocated. Dante bends down, the better to hear what the sinner has to say, like a friar recalled by the felon on the pretence that he has something to add to his confession.
[540] The prophecy: ‘The writing.’ The speaker is Nicholas III., of the great Roman family of the Orsini, and Pope from 1277 to 1280; a man of remarkable bodily beauty and grace of manner, as well as of great force of character. Like many other Holy Fathers he was either a great hypocrite while on his promotion, or else he degenerated very quickly after getting himself well settled on the Papal Chair. He is said to have been the first Pope who practised simony with no attempt at concealment. Boniface VIII., whom he is waiting for to relieve him, became Pope in 1294, and died in 1303. None of the four Popes between 1280 and 1294 were simoniacs; so that Nicholas was uppermost in the hole for twenty-three years. Although ignorant of what is now passing on the earth, he can refer back to his foreknowledge of some years earlier (see Inf. x. 99) as if to a prophetic writing, and finds that according to this it is still three years too soon, it being now only 1300, for the arrival of Boniface. This is the usual explanation of the passage. To it lies the objection that foreknowledge of the present that can be referred back to is the same thing as knowledge of it, and with this the spirits in Inferno are not endowed. But Dante elsewhere shows that he finds it hard to observe the limitation. The alternative explanation, supported by the use of scritto (writing) in the text, is that Nicholas refers to some prophecy once current about his successors in Rome.
[541] The fair Lady: The Church. The guile is that shown by Boniface in getting his predecessor Celestine v. to abdicate (Inf. iii. 60).
[542] As befooled: Dante does not yet suspect that it is with a Pope he is speaking. He is dumbfounded at being addressed as Boniface.
[543] All the simoniacs: All the Popes that had been guilty of the sin.
[544] A Pastor from the West: Boniface died in 1303, and was succeeded by Benedict XI., who in his turn was succeeded by Clement V., the Pastor from the West. Benedict was not stained with simony, and so it is Clement that is to relieve Boniface; and he is to come from the West, that is, from Avignon, to which the Holy See was removed by him. Or the reference may simply be to the country of his birth. Elsewhere he is spoken of as ‘the Gascon who shall cheat the noble Henry’ of Luxemburg (Parad. xvii. 82).—This passage has been read as throwing light on the question of when the Inferno was written. Nicholas says that from the time Boniface arrives till Clement relieves him will be a shorter period than that during which he has himself been in Inferno, that is to say, a shorter time than twenty years. Clement died in 1314; and so, it is held, we find a date before which the Inferno was, at least, not published. But Clement was known for years before his death to be ill of a disease usually soon fatal. He became Pope in 1305, and the wonder was that he survived so long as nine years. Dante keeps his prophecy safe—if it is a prophecy; and there does seem internal evidence to prove the publication of the Inferno to have taken place long before 1314.—It is needless to point out how the censure of Clement gains in force if read as having been published before his death.
[545] Jason: Or Joshua, who purchased the office of High Priest from Antiochus Epiphanes, and innovated the customs of the Jews (2 Maccab. iv. 7).
[546] Punished well: At line 12 Dante has admired the propriety of the Divine distribution of penalties. He appears to regard with a special complacency that which he invents for the simoniacs. They were industrious in multiplying benefices for their kindred; Boniface, for example, besides Cardinals, appointed about twenty Archbishops and Bishops from among his own relatives. Here all the simoniacal Popes have to be contented with one place among them. They paid no regard to whether a post was well filled or not: here they are set upside down.
[547] Charles: Nicholas was accused of taking a bribe to assist Peter of Arragon in ousting Charles of Anjou from the kingdom of Sicily.