[1] The shepherd who precedes the flock, and should lead it aright, is the Pope. A mystical interpretation of the injunction upon the children of Israel (Leviticus, xi.) in regard to clean and unclean beasts was familiar to the schoolmen. St. Augustine expounds the cloven hoof as symbolic of right conduct, because it does not easily slip, and the chewing of the cud as signifying the meditation of wisdom. Dante seems here to mean that the Pope has the true doctrine, but makes not the true use of it for his own guidance and the government of the world.
[2] Material good.
[3] Pope and Emperor.
[4] The results that follow this forced union.
“Within the land which the Adige and the Po water, valor and courtesy were wont to be found before Frederick had his quarrel;[1] now safely anyone may pass there who out of shame would cease discoursing with the good, or drawing near them. Truly three old men are still there in whom the antique age rebukes the new, and it seems late to them ere God restore them to the better life; Currado da Palazzo, and the good Gherardo,[2] and Guido da Castel, who is better named, after the manner of the French, the simple Lombard.[3]
[1] Before the Emperor Frederick II. had his quarrel with the Pope; that is, before Emperor and Pope had failed in their respective duties to each other.
[2] Gherardo da Camino, “who was noble in his life, and whose memory will always be noble,” says Dante in the Convito, iv. 14.
[3] “The French,” says Benvenuto da Linda, “call all Italians Lombards, and repute them very astute.”
“Say thou henceforth, that the Church of Rome, through confounding in itself two modes of rule,[1] falls in the mire, and defiles itself and its burden.”
[1] The spiritual and the temporal.