CANTO XIX

The Divine Comedy - Inferno

by Dante Alighieri

Translated by Charles Eliot Norton

CANTO XIX, THE DIVINE COMEDY - INFERNO by Alighieri Dante
An eText from LiteratureClassics.com.

Please see the eText readme for important copyright information (available from the options menu above if you are browsing online or as a separate file in the archive if you are browsing offline.)


Eighth Circle third pit: simonists.--Pope Nicholas
III.

Oh Simon Magus! Oh ye his wretched followers, who, rapacious, do
prostitute for gold and silver the things of God that ought to be
the brides of righteousness, now it behoves for you the trumpet
sound, since ye are in the third pit!

Already were we come to the next tomb,[1] mounted on that part of
the crag which just above the middle of the ditch hangs plumb. Oh
Supreme Wisdom, how great is the art that Thou displayest in
Heaven, on Earth, and in the Evil World! and how justly doth Thy
Power distribute!

[1] The next bolgia or pit.


I saw along the sides, and over the bottom, the livid stone full
of holes all of one size, and each was circular. They seemed to
me not less wide nor larger than those that in my beautiful Saint
John are made as place for the baptizers [1] one of which, not
many years ago, I broke for sake of one who was stifling in it;
and be this the seal to undeceive all men. Forth from the mouth
of each protruded the feet of a sinner, and his legs up to the
calf, and the rest was within. The soles of all were both on
fire, wherefore their joints quivered so violently that they
would have snapped withes and bands. As the flaming of things
oiled is wont to move only on the outer surface, so was it there
from the heels to the toes.

[1] "My beautiful Saint John" is the Baptistery at Florence. In
Dante's time the infants, born during the year, were all here
baptized by immersion, mostly on the day of St. John Baptist, the
24th of June. There was a large circular font in the middle of
the church, and around it in its marble wall were four
cylindrical standing-places for the priests, closed by doors, to
protect them from the pressure of the crowd.


"Who is he, Master, that writhes, quivering more than the others
his consorts," said I, "and whom a ruddier flame is sucking?" And
he to me, "If thou wilt that I carry thee down there by that bank
which slopes the most,[1] from him thou shalt know of himself and
of his wrongs." And I, "Whatever pleaseth thee even so is good to
me. Thou art Lord, and knowest that I part me not from thy
will, and thou knowest that which is unspoken."

[1] The whole of the Eighth circle slopes toward the centre, so
that the inner wall of each bolgia is lower, and is less sharply
inclined than the outer.


Then we went upon the fourth dyke, turned, and descended on the
left hand, down to the bottom pierced with holes, and narrow. And
the good Master set me not down yet from his haunch, till he
brought me to the cleft of him who was thus lamenting with his
shanks.

"O whoe'er thou art, that keepest upside down, sad soul, planted
like a stake," I began to say, "speak, if thou canst." I was
standing like the friar who confesses the perfidious assassin,[1]
who, after he is fixed, recalls him, in order to delay his death.

[1] Such criminals were not infrequently punished by being set,
head downwards, in a hole in which they were buried alive.


And he[1] cried out, "Art thou already standing there? Art thoh
already standing there, Boniface? By several years the record
lied to me. Art thou so quickly sated with that having, for which
thou didst not fear to seize by guile the beautiful Lady,[2] and
then to do her outrage?"

[1] This is Nicholas III., pope from 1277 to 128O; he takes Dante
to be Boniface VIII., but Boniface was not to die till 13O3.
Compare what Nicholas says of "the record" with Farinata's
statement, in Canto X, concerning the foresight of the damned.

[2] The Church, to which Boniface did outrage in many forms;
but worst by his simoniacal practices.


Such I became as those that, not comprehending that which is
replied to them, stand as if mocked, and know not what to answer.

Then Virgil said, "Tell him quickly, I am not he, I am not he
thou thinkest." And I answered as was enjoined on me; whereat the
spirit quite twisted his feet. Thereafter, sighing and with
tearful voice, he said to me, "Then what dost thou require of me?
If to know who I am concerneth thee so much that thou hast
crossed the bank therefor, know that I was vested with the Great
Mantle; and verily I was a son of the She-Bear,[1] so eager to
advance the cubs, that up there I put wealth, and here myself,
into the purse. Beneath my head are stretched the others that
preceded me in simony, flattened through the fissures of the
rock. There below shall I likewise sink, when he shall come whom
I believed thou wert, then when I put to thee the sudden
question; but already the time is longer that I have cooked my
feet, and that I have been thus upside down, than he will stay
planted with red feet; for after him will come, of uglier deed,
from westward, a shepherd without law,[2] such as must cover him
and me again. A new Jason will he be, of whom it is read in
Maccabees;[3] and as to that one his king was compliant, so unto
this he who rules France shall be."[4]

[1] Nicholas was of the Orsini family.

[2] Clement V., who will come from Avignon, and in a little more
than ten years after the death of Boniface. Nicholas had already
"cooked his feet" for twenty years. The prophecy of the death of
Clement after a shorter time affords an indication that this
canto was not written until after 1314, the year of his death.

[3] The story of Jason, "that ungodly wretch and no high-priest"
who bought the high-priesthood from King Antiochus, is told in 2
Maccabees iv. Its application to the Pope was plain.

[4] "He who rules France" was Philip the Fair.


I know not if here I was too audacious that I only answered him
in this strain, "Pray now tell me how much treasure our Lord
desired of Saint Peter before he placed the keys in his keeping?
Surely he required nothing save 'Follow me.' Nor did Peter or the
others require of Matthias gold or silver, when he was chosen to
the place which the guilty soul had lost. Therefore stay thou,
for thou art rightly punished, and guard well the ill-gotten
money that against Charles[1] made thee to be bold. And were it
not that reverence for the Supreme Keys that thou heldest in the
glad life still forbiddeth me, I would use words still more
grave; for your avarice saddens the world, trampling down the
good and exalting the bad. Of you shepherds the Evangelist was
aware, when she that sitteth upon the waters was seen by him to
fornicate with kings: that woman that was born with the seven
heads, and from the ten horns had evidence, so long as virtue
pleased her spouse.[2] Ye have made you a god of gold and silver:
and what difference is there between you and the idolater save
that he worships one and ye a hundred? Ah Constantine! of how
much ill was mother, not thy conversion, but that dowry which the
first rich Father received from thee!"[3]

[1] Charles of Anjou, of whom Nicholas III, was the enemy. He was
charged with having been bribed to support the attempt to expel
the French from Sicily, which began with the Sicilian Vespers in
1282.

[2] Dante deals freely with the figures of the Apocalypse:
Revelation wii. The woman here stands for the Church; her seven
heads may be interpreted as the Seven Sacraments, and her ten
horns as the Commandments; her spouse is the Pope.

[3] The reference is to the so-called Donation of Constantine,
the reality of which was generally accepted till long after
Dante's time.


And, while I was singing these notes to him, whether anger or
conscience stung him, he violently quivered with both feet. I
believe, forsooth, that it had pleased my Leader, with so
contented look be listened ever to the sound of the true words
uttered. Thereupon with both his arms he took me, and when he had
me wholly on his breast, remounted on the way by which he had
descended. Nor did he tire of holding me clasped till he had
borne me up to the summit of the arch which is the passage from
the fourth to the fifth dyke. Here softly he laid down his
burden, softly because of the ragged and steep crag, that would
be a difficult pass for goats. Thence another great valley was
discovered to me.