[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.