Inferno Xxiii
INFERNO XXIII
1–3. The quiet opening of the canto compares the two travelers to pairs of Franciscan mendicants. As John of Serravalle reminds us in his comment to this passage, the more authoritative of the two traditionally went before. Thus, when we consider the considerable time spent in exploring Virgil’s difficulties in the preceding two cantos, we probably ought to perceive the delicate irony inherent in these verses. [return to English / Italian]
4–18. The fable runs roughly as follows: a mouse, wishing to cross a river, is advised by an apparently friendly frog to allow himself to be attached to that frog by a string, to which project he consents. Once the frog, mouse in tow, reaches midstream, he dives in an attempt to drown the mouse. An overflying kite, or hawk, seeing the struggling mouse atop the waters, dives down, captures and kills the mouse—and the attached frog, a bonus. It seems sensible to believe that, as the protagonist reviews the events of the prior canto, he thinks of two things: the aptness of the fable to the situation of Ciampolo (mouse), Alichino (frog), and Calcabrina (kite), as well as to his own: Dante (mouse), Virgil (frog), and the Malebranche (kite). Thus the beginning and the end of the fable are particularly apt to his situation: in order to reach the next bolgia he has tied himself to Virgil, and now the kite must be on its way. That Virgil should be cast in the role of the double-dealing frog seemed so unlikely that apparently no one, before Guyler, pp. 35–40, suggested as much. While this writer agrees with him, the complexity of the passage, it should be noted, guarantees that its meaning will continue to be debated.
The words “mo” and “issa” are both dialectical forms, meaning “right now,” derived from the Latin modo (used again in this canto at v. 28 and a total of twenty-five times in the poem) and ipsa hora (see Purg. XXIV.55). Hollander (Holl.1984.3), p. 93, suggests that the choice of words for “now” accentuates the imminent and immediate danger in which Dante finds himself.
The absolute source of this fable of “Aesop” is not known, but it seems that Dante may have been acquainted with both the collection circulated under the name Romulus, which McKenzie (McKe.1900.1) says is the (Carolingian) collection adverted to by the various fourteenth-century commentators who discuss the passage, and the later one (12th century) assembled by Waltherius Anglicus. Clara Kraus (“Esopo,” ED, vol. 2, 1970, pp. 729–30) points out, following McKenzie, that this particular fable derives from an unknown non-Aesopic source, even if the poet presents it as being by him. (Dante had referred to Aesop once previously: Conv. IV.xxx.4. For the question of sources see also Mandruzzato (Mand.1955.1) and Guyler (Guyl.1972.1), pp. 29–31, the latter reviewing the discussions of McKenzie, Larkin (Lark.1962.1 and Lark.1966.1), and Padoan (Pado.1964.1) and eventually favoring Waltherius as source text. [return to English / Italian]
19. For Dante’s hair, curling tight with fear, Pietro di Dante adduces Aeneid II.774: “steteruntque comae” (and my hair stood on end). The setting for the scene is the night of the destruction of Troy. A few lines earlier (v. 733), Aeneas is warned by his father, Anchises, to flee: “nate,…fuge, nate; propinquant” (my son, my son, flee—they are coming closer). Moments later, Aeneas realizes that he has lost Creusa, and turns back to the flaming city to find her. His wife’s ghost appears to him in a vision that is the cause of his hair standing on end. If Dante was thinking of this scene, as Pietro believed, he has perhaps put Anchises’ warning about the fast-approaching Greek marauders into his own mouth, the advice he might have expected to have heard from Virgil, his “father,” and the author of that scene. For these observations see Hollander (Holl.1984.3), p. 94. [return to English / Italian]
25–30. As Mark Musa (Musa.1977.1) has pointed out, Virgil, here and elsewhere (Inf. IV.51; X.17–18; XVI.119–120; XIX.39; XXVI.73–74), is either accorded by the protagonist or confers upon himself the power of “reading Dante’s mind.” Musa shows that, rather than the power actually to read the protagonist’s thoughts, Virgil’s capacity is one of heightened rationality, not the kind of supernatural power enjoyed by Beatrice, who, like all beatified souls, has precisely the ability to read the unvoiced thoughts of others; in other words, Virgil is able to fathom what Dante is thinking from the context of the experiences that they share, and nothing more than that.
Dante refers to mirrors being made by backing clear glass with lead in Convivio III.ix.8. [return to English / Italian]
34–36. The Malebranche are back, the “kite” of the fable, about to pounce on “mouse” and “frog.” [return to English / Italian]
37–45. This simile, classical in form, seems to have no classical counterpart (although the fires of dying Troy may come to mind), whether in image or in language; rather, it seems to be among those that Dante draws from contemporary experience, ruinous fires being a pronounced feature of medieval town life. Virgil’s customary paternal role here is resolved into a maternal one. That we should take this surprising change as meant positively is guaranteed by a later scene, just as Virgil has left the poem and returned to Limbo. At this moment of greatest pathos involving Dante’s love for his guide and teacher, Dante turns back to him as a frightened child runs to his mother (Purg. XXX.44), only to find him gone forever. [return to English / Italian]
46–48. The second simile is also without classical origin. Commentators point out that land mills were powered by water, diverted from other sources along sluices, while water mills were situated in the rivers or streams that powered them. [return to English / Italian]
52–57. At the border of their domain the Malebranche, so swift on their own turf, are now frozen into immobility by the laws of God’s governance of hell, as Dante and Virgil look back at them. The victims of earthly barrators are not similarly protected. [return to English / Italian]
58–60. The new set of sinners is characterized, in a total change of pace, by slowness and quiet, in stark contrast with the extraordinarily energetic, even frenetic, pace of the cantos of barratry.
They are “lacquered” in that they are covered by gilded mantles (v. 64). [return to English / Italian]
61–63. The hypocrites, “dressed” as monks, are in fact represented by only two personages, Catalano and Loderingo, both friars (see n. to vv. 104–108). The hypocrisy of the clergy—and especially of the mendicant orders—was a medieval commonplace, one most effectively exploited by such writers as Boccaccio and Chaucer.
While many early commentators believed that the monastery referred to was located in Köln (Cologne), in Germany, the predominant modern view is that this is the great Benedictine monastery in France, at Cluny. [return to English / Italian]
64. “Ypocresia … dicitur ab ‘epi’ quod est ‘supra’ et ‘crisis’ quod est ‘aurum’ ” (Hypocrisy is so called from “epi,” that is, “above,” and “crisis,” that is, “gold”). This familiar gloss, deriving from Uguccione of Pisa, is found in the third redaction of Pietro di Dante’s commentary. [return to English / Italian]
66. Almost all the early commentators relate the tale that Frederick II (see Inf. X.119) put those who had particularly offended him to the following torture and death: he would have them covered with a thick “cape” of lead and placed in a large crucible, under which a fire was set, causing the lead to melt and the victim to suffer greatly before dying. While there is no evidence to connect Frederick with this practice, it seems clear that many of his contemporaries believed that he indeed did dispatch his enemies in this way. [return to English / Italian]
76. Once again Dante’s Tuscan speech serves to find him damned souls whose lives will be of interest. See Inf. X.22; XXII.99. [return to English / Italian]
92. For Dante’s word “hypocrites” commentators frequently cite Matthew 6:16: “Moreover when you fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear to men to fast.” [return to English / Italian]
102. The friars are like creaking scales (literally, “balances” in Dante’s Italian) because the weight they support on their lurching shoulders is so tremendous that they “creak” beneath it. [return to English / Italian]
103. “Frati gaudenti, ‘Jovial Friars,’ popular name of the knights of a military and conventual order, called the Knights of Our Lady…, which was [re-]founded in 1261 by certain citizens of Bologna under the sanction of [Pope] Urban IV. The object of the order was to make peace between the contending factions in the different cities of Italy, and to reconcile family feuds, and to protect the weak against their oppressors. The nickname ‘Frati Gaudenti’ is supposed to have been bestowed upon the knights on account of the laxity of their rules, which permitted them to marry and to live in their own homes, and merely required them to abstain from the use of gold and silver trappings, from attending at secular banquets, and from encouraging actors; while they bound themselves not to take up arms, save in defence of widows and orphans, and of the Catholic faith, or for the purpose of making peace between man and man” (T). For Dante’s relationship to Bologna see Raimondi (Raim.1967.1). [return to English / Italian]
104–108. Catalano (ca. 1210–85) was a Bolognese Guelph of the Catalani family; Loderingo degh Andalò (ca. 1210–93) belonged to a Ghibelline family of the city. Loderingo was one of the founders of the Bolognese order of the Frati Gaudenti, and Catalano was also involved in it. While their allegiances to opposing parties made them seem to be an ideal “couple” to serve as podestà (an office usually taken on by a single non-citizen, chosen in the hope of guaranteeing fairness) of a faction-riddled city, their vows to the pope meant that, once they were chosen to serve in Florence in 1266, they in fact sided with the forces of the pope (Clement IV) against the Florentine Ghibellines, with the result that the area known as the Gardingo, where some of the most powerful Ghibelline families lived (including Farinata’s Uberti—see Inf. X), was razed by the populace with at least the tacit consent of these two. [return to English / Italian]
109. There is dispute as to whether Dante’s broken apostrophe of the two friars (or, as some believe, of friars in general) was going to be one of rebuke (e.g., Benvenuto da Imola) or commiseration (e.g., Francesco da Buti). The context and the similar moment in Inferno XIX.90–117, when Dante upbraids Pope Nicholas III, both would seem to support the harsher reading. [return to English / Italian]
110–117. Dante’s attention is drawn by the figure crucified upon the ground, attached through his hands and his conjoined feet. From Catalano’s description it will become clear that this is Caiaphas, the high priest who urged the Pharisees “that one man should be martyred for the people” and bears that burden of responsibility for the death of Jesus (see John 11:50). As Chiavacci Leonardi points out (Chia.1991.1, p. 696), Caiaphas masks his own vicious motives for wanting to give over Jesus as a desire for the public weal (i.e., saving the rest of the Hebrews from Roman repression), thus justifying his presence among the hypocrites. [return to English / Italian]
118–120. The punishment of Caiaphas (and of his fellows in this act of hypocrisy, referred to in the next tercet) is a refinement upon that of the rest of the hypocrites. They are cloaked in lead, he is naked (his Christ-centered hypocrisy deserves to be revealed); yet he, too, feels the weight of hypocrisy on his own body when each of the others, in turn, slowly walks over his outstretched form. [return to English / Italian]
121–123. Catalano refers to Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who presided over the council of the Pharisees (the “others” of the text) by which Jesus was condemned. It was this action, in Dante’s mind, which was punished in the destruction of the second Temple by the forces of the Roman emperor Vespasian, led by his son Titus, in 70 A.D. and in the resultant diaspora of the Hebrew people. [return to English / Italian]
124–126. The high priest, unlike Jesus, is crucified upon the ground and trodden upon (thus seeming so “ignoble”). There has been much discussion of the possible reasons for Virgil’s “marveling” over the crucified shape of Caiaphas. Castelvetro, in error, says that Virgil would have seen Caiaphas on an earlier visit to the depths; Lombardi gets this right: when Virgil was sent down by Erichtho, Christ had not yet been crucified and Caiaphas not yet been damned. Further, and as Margherita Frankel has argued (Fran.1984.1, p. 87), Virgil has already seen Christ and his Cross (Inf. IV.53–54). Nonetheless, and as others have pointed out, Virgil does not marvel at others who were not here before his first visit. Rossetti further remarks that nowhere else in Inferno does Virgil marvel at any other sinner, the text thus conferring a specialness upon this scene. Benvenuto da Imola and Vellutello both offered an interesting hypothesis, which has since made its way into some modern commentaries: the verse at line 117, “one man should be martyred for the people,” seems to echo a verse from the Aeneid (V.815): “per multis dabitur caput” (one life shall be given for many). (In that passage Neptune speaks of the coming “sacrifice” of Palinurus.) Vellutello sees that “prophecy” as an unwitting Virgilian prophecy of Christ, and suggests that Virgil now wonders at how close he had come. If that seems perhaps a forced reading, a similar effect is gained by the phrase that Dante uses to indicate Caiaphas’s punishment in his “eternal exile” (etterno essilio). That phrase will only be used once again in the poem, precisely by Virgil himself to indicate his own punishment in Limbo (Purg. XXI.18), as Castelvetro observed. The Anonimo Fiorentino, perhaps better than many later commentators, caught the flavor of this passage, which he reads as indicating Virgil’s grief for himself because he had not lived in a time when he could have known Christ. In this reader’s view, Virgil wonders at Caiaphas because the high priest had actually known Christ in the world and yet turned against Him. Had Virgil had that opportunity, he thinks, his life (and afterlife) would have been very different. [return to English / Italian]
131. The “black angels” are obviously the winged devils of the last bolgia. Are they actually fallen angels, or does Virgil merely speak ironically, employing the figure antiphrasis, indicating devils by their opposites? Most of the commentators seem to believe that these really are fallen angels. This may be a questionable interpretation, since Dante seems clear about the kinds of fallen angels found in hell: neutral (Canto III.37–42) and rebellious (Canto VIII.82–83). If this were the only other place in hell in which we found evil creatures referred to as “angels,” it would seem likely that the term would be merely a figure of speech on Virgil’s part. However, we also have the black Cherub referred to by Guido da Montefeltro (Inf. XXVII.113). See the note to that passage. [return to English / Italian]
133–138. Virgil’s question to Catalano (and Loderingo) receives this devastating answer: he has been fooled by Malacoda; all the bridges connecting the fifth and sixth “valleys” are down. [return to English / Italian]
142–144. Catalano’s bit of “university wit” is the last straw for Virgil, pilloried with understated sarcasm for trusting in the words of devils. Catalano cites Scripture (John 8:44): “Diabolus est mendax et pater eius” (The devil is a liar and the father of lies). [return to English / Italian]
145–148. Virgil, angered (as well he might be), strides away, followed by the protagonist. We reflect that it is Dante who has contrived this whole elaborate scene to the discomfiture of Virgil, but who now, as a character in the poem, follows humbly and caringly in his dear leader’s footsteps. Hollander (Holl.1984.4), pp. 115–17, has suggested that this last verse is modelled on the concluding verses of Statius’s Thebaid (XII.816–817): “… nec tu divinam Aeneida tempta, / sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora” (do not attempt to rival the divine Aeneid, but follow at a distance, always worshiping its footsteps). With this gesture Statius tries to reassure his reader (and perhaps himself) that he feels no envy toward Virgil’s greatness; Dante’s gesture has a different task to perform, to reassure himself (and his reader) that, for all that the poet has put Virgil through in these cantos of barratry, he nonetheless reveres his great pagan guide. [return to English / Italian]