INFERNO XIX
INFERNO XIX
1–6. “In the Bible, Simon Magus was a sorcerer of Samaria who was converted by the preaching of Philip the evangelist (see Acts 8:9–13). When he subsequently attempted to buy the power of conferring the Holy Ghost, he was severely rebuked by the apostle Peter for thinking that the gift of God might be purchased with money (see Acts 8:14–24). From the name Simon is derived the word ‘simony,’ which is applied to all traffic in sacred things, especially the buying or selling of ecclesiastical offices” (Singleton’s comment).
For the intrinsic and striking distinction between the man named Simon, who was a magus (Acts 8:9), and the apostle Peter, also named Simon (Simon Petrus—John 20:2, 20:6), see Singleton (Sing.1965.1) as well as Herzman and Stephany (Herz.1978.1), pp. 40, 46. Nicholas is seen as the follower of Simon Magus, while Dante presents himself as the follower of Simon Peter.
For studies of the canto as a whole see Fost.1969.1 and the third chapter of Musa.1974.1. [return to English / Italian]
16–21. Some have argued that this passage is not credible if taken literally and, therefore, must be understood as metaphorical. See Spitzer (Spit.1943.1) and, more recently, Noakes (Noak.1968.1), who argues that the public vow of adherence to the French king taken, in the baptistry and thus in proximity to the font, before Charles of Valois entered Florence in 1302, is what Dante now confesses he “broke.” The language of the passage is so concrete that it seems difficult to credit such an ingenious solution.
Mazzoni (Mazz.1981.1) affirms the literal meaning of the passage, while leaving in doubt the nature of the act that Dante claims to have performed. Reviewing the commentary tradition, he supports the view of most of the early commentators that the noun battezzatori refers to the priests who performed baptismal rites. Mirko Tavoni (Tavo.1992.1) gives reasons for believing that it refers to the fonts themselves. That question is probably not resolvable, as the noun can have either meaning.
All the early commentators take the incident referred to here as actually having occurred, when a child, playing with other children, became lodged in one of the smaller baptismal fonts of the Florentine baptistry. Castelvetro has perhaps the most believable explanation; in his view the baptismal font and its several little pozzetti were protected by a thin wooden covering in order to protect the holy water from sight (and desacralizing droppings?). It is this and not the marble of the font (which Benvenuto da Imola has Dante breaking with an axe brought to him by a bystander) that the poet broke, thus saving the near-drowned child. His solemn oath, reminiscent of the language describing papal bulls and their seals, now stakes his authority as Florentine and poet on the charitable nature of his act, which others had apparently characterized as sacrilegious. Whatever explanation we find most acceptable, it seems clear that Dante is referring to an actual event that his former fellow-citizens would remember. [return to English / Italian]
22–24. We shall later learn that Dante here comes face to feet with a pope, Nicholas III (vv. 69–72). The inverted figure, like Judas in the central mouth of Lucifer (Inf. XXXIV.63), has his head within, his legs without. Dante’s use of bocca (mouth) for the opening of the hole into which he descends suggests that eventually Nicholas will be eaten and digested by hell itself once the next simoniac pope comes to his eternal station. [return to English / Italian]
25. For the parodic inversion of Pentecostal fire in the punishment of sins that involve the perversion of the gift of the Holy Spirit, in particular as manifest in the misuse of extraordinary gifts of persuasion found among those punished as heresiarchs, sodomites, simoniacs, and false counselors, see Reginald French (Fren.1964.1), pp. 8–10. [return to English / Italian]
28–30. For the oil referred to here as indicative, parodically, of the anointing unction that priests offer those who suffer, see Herzman and Stephany (Herz.1978.1), pp. 49–51. Unction is usually associated with the head, not the feet; the ironic point is clear. [return to English / Italian]
35. The further bank of the bolgia is not as high as the nearer one because the slope of the Malebolge cuts away the topmost part of each successive pouch. For this reason Virgil will lead Dante over the third bolgia to the fourth embankment only to climb down into the third from this vantage point. [return to English / Italian]
37–39. Dante’s submissiveness to his lord, acknowledging Virgil’s awareness of his wishes, is surely meant to contrast with Nicholas’s rebellious offense to his. [return to English / Italian]
46–47. The pope’s situation is reminiscent of St. Peter’s upside-down crucifixion (see Herzman and Stephany [Herz.1978.1, p. 44]), but also refers to the Florentine mode of dispatching convicted assassins, “planting” them upside down in a hole and then suffocating them when the hole is filled back up with earth: “Let the assassin be planted upside down, so that he may be put to death.” [return to English / Italian]
49–51. Dante now assumes the role of confessing friar. The last verse of the tercet has caused controversy. While cessare, used transitively, ordinarily in Dante means “to avoid,” most agree that here it means “delay.” In our translation we have tried to hedge, using “stay” in such a way as to allow it to be interpreted either as “put off (for a while)” or “put a stop to.” [return to English / Italian]
52–53. The first naming of Pope Boniface VIII (Benedetto Caetani) in the poem. Succeeding Celestine V in January 1295 and dying in October 1303, he greatly strengthened the power of the papacy, while also asserting its temporal power in the realm Dante allowed to empire alone. His support of the Black Guelphs and the French forces in Florence earned him Dante’s unflagging enmity. Nicholas’s taking Dante for Boniface is grimly yet hilariously amusing. [return to English / Italian]
54. Some have suggested that the condition of future knowledge alluded to by Farinata (Inf. X.100–108) pertains only to the heretics; this passage would seem to indicate clearly that others, as well, and perhaps all those in hell, have some sense of the future but none of the present. Nicholas had “read” in the “book of the future” that Boniface would be on his way to hell as of 1303, and is thus now confused, as he expects no one else to pile in on top of him but Boniface. [return to English / Italian]
57. The beautiful Lady is, resolved from metaphor, the Church, Christ’s “bride.” [return to English / Italian]
69–72. Pope Nicholas III (Giovanni Gaetano Orsini) served from 1277–80, openly practicing nepotism in favor of his relations. His references to the “she-bear” and her “cubs” reflect his family name, Orsini (orsa means “bear” in Italian), one of the most powerful of Roman families. [return to English / Italian]
79–87. Clement is compared to Jason, brother of the high priest Onias. From the king of Syria, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, he bought his brother’s position and then brought pagan practices to Jerusalem (see II Mach. 4:7–26). In short, to Dante he seemed a Jewish “simoniac pope,” prefiguring the corrupt practices of Clement. Dante condemns, as Durling points out (Durl.1996.1, p. 300), a number of Clement’s actions, including “his role in Philip’s destruction of the Templars, Purg. XX.91–93; the removal of the papal see to Avignon, Purg. XXXII.157–160; his simony, Par. XVII.82; and his betrayal of Henry VII, Par. XXX.142–148.”
This is perhaps the crucial passage for those who debate the internal dating of the composition of the poem. First, one should explain its literal meaning. Nicholas has now been “cooking” for twenty years (1280–1300). The Frenchman Bertrand de Got, who served as Pope Clement V from 1305–1314 and who supervised the papacy’s removal to Avignon in 1309, an act that caused much Italian outrage (and notably Dante’s [see Purg. XXXII.157–160; Epist. XI.21–26]), will replace Boniface as topmost simoniac pope before Boniface spends twenty years in that position of punishment, i.e., before 1323. If the first cantica was composed, as many, but not all, propose, between 1306–07 and 1309–10, Dante here is either making a rough (and chancy) prediction that Clement, who suffered from ill health, would die sometime before 1323, or he is knowingly referring to the death of Clement in 1314. However, most, observing Dante’s general practice in “predicting” only things actually known to him, argue that this is a prophecy post eventum, i.e., that the passage was written after April of 1314, when Clement died. If that is true, then either the traditional dating of the poem’s composition is incorrect, and it was written later (and much more quickly) than is generally believed (ca. 1313–1321), or Dante inserted this passage while he was revising Inferno in 1315 before circulating it. This is Petrocchi’s solution (Petr.1969.1), and many follow it. For an opposing view, see Padoan (Pado.1993.1). And for a summary of the question and bibliography see A. E. Quaglio, “Commedia, Composizione,” ED (vol. 2, 1970), pp. 81–82.
That this is the only reference to Clement before well into Purgatorio lends support to the idea that this passage is a later interpolation. In a paper written in 1999 Stefano Giannini (Gian.1999.1), a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, examined all the references to events occurring after 1300 in Inferno. His provisional results are as follows: 22 references to events occurring between 1300 and 1304; 4 references to events occurring between 1306 and 1309 (all between Cantos XXVI and XXIX); this sole reference to an event occurring in 1314. These results would certainly seem to support those who maintain that this passage is a later interpolation and that Inferno was essentially completed during the first decade of the fourteenth century. [return to English / Italian]
88–89. Dante’s coyness here is palpable: of course he is not being “too bold” (troppo folle) in the eyes of any just observer. At the same time he is clearly aware of the enormity of his “singing” such a “tune” to a pope. [return to English / Italian]
90–117. Dante’s great outburst of invective against Nicholas (and all simoniac popes) is based on the history of the Church, beginning with Christ’s calling of Peter, moving to Peter’s and the other apostles’ choosing Matthias by lot to take the place of Judas. After Dante alludes to Nicholas’s vile maneuvering against the Angevin king, Charles I of Sicily, he returns to the Bible, now to Rev. 17, interpreted positively as the presentation of the Roman Church as keeper of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Ten Commandments. (For the relationship between the woman here [Rome as honest wife of the Caesars, free of papal constraint] and the whore of Purgatorio XXXII [Rome as the corrupted Church after the Donation of Constantine] see Davis [Davi.1998.1], p. 271.) Dante’s oration ends with a final slam at papal worship of “the golden calf,” joining the final apostrophe of the canto in rebuke of Constantine as the source of most of Christianity’s troubles when he granted the papacy temporal authority. [return to English / Italian]
115–117. The author’s apostrophe of the emperor Constantine (reigned 306–337) holds him responsible for the so-called “Donation of Constantine,” by which he granted temporal sovereignty to Pope Sylvester I (314–335)—and his successors—over Italy and the rest of the western empire. This document was considered genuine until Lorenzo Valla, in the fifteenth century, demonstrated that it was a forgery. For Dante it was genuine and a cause for excited concern. (His views on the subject are exposited forcefully in the later Monarchia [III.x.1–9]). In his view the emperor was not empowered to give over his authority; thus the document was truthful, but its legitimacy compromised.
We are perhaps meant to understand by these lines that Sylvester, who cured Constantine of leprosy and was, as a result, rewarded by him with authority over the Roman Empire, is the bottom-most pope in this hole, the “first rich Father,” a condition that was to his immediate benefit but to the eventual loss of all Christians. [return to English / Italian]
124–126. Virgil’s pleasure in Dante is indeed so great that he embraces him and carries him back out of the bolgia. [return to English / Italian]
128–130. Virgil sets Dante down upon the bridge that overlooks the fourth bolgia, in which, in the next canto, Dante will observe the diviners. [return to English / Italian]