The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (essential books to read TXT) 📕

which has in that heaven a revolution of its own: whose circle the astronomers term epicycle.”

 

v. 11. To sit in Dido’s bosom.] Virgil. Aen. 1. i. 718, v. 40. ‘O ye whose intellectual ministry.]

Voi ch’ intendendo il terzo ciel movete. The first line in our Poet” first canzone. See his Convito, Ibid. p. 40.

 

v. 53. had the time been more.] The spirit now speaking is Charles Martel crowned king of Hungary, and son of Charles 11

king of Naples and Sicily, to which dominions dying in his father’s lifetime, he did not succeed.

 

v. 57. Thou lov’dst me well.] Charles Martel might have been known to our poet at Florence whither he came to meet his father in 1295, the year of his death. The retinue and the habiliments of the young monarch are minutely described by G. Villani, who adds, that “he remained more than twenty days in Florence, waiting for his father King Charles and his brothers during which time great honour was done him by the, Florentines and he showed no less love towards them, and he was much in favour with all.”

1. viii. c. 13. His brother Robert, king of Naples, was the friend of Petrarch.

 

v. 60. The left bank.] Provence.

 

v. 62. That horn

Of fair Ausonia.]

The kingdom of Naples.

 

v. 68. The land.] Hungary.

 

v. 73. The beautiful Trinaeria.] Sicily, so called from its three promontories, of which Pachynus and Pelorus, here mentioned, are two.

 

v. 14 ‘Typhaeus.] The giant whom Jupiter is fabled to have overwhelmed

under the mountain Aetna from whence he vomits forth smoke and flame.

 

v. 77. Sprang through me from Charles and Rodolph.] “Sicily would be still ruled by a race of monarchs, descended through me from Charles I and Rodolph I the former my grandfather king of Naples and Sicily; the latter emperor of Germany, my father-in-law; “both celebrated in the Purgatory Canto, Vll.

 

v. 78. Had not ill lording.] “If the ill conduct of our governors in Sicily had not excited the resentment and hatred of the people and stimulated them to that dreadful massacre at the Sicilian vespers;” in consequence of which the kingdom fell into the hands of Peter III of Arragon, in 1282

 

v. 81. My brother’s foresight.] He seems to tax his brother Robert with employing necessitous and greedy Catalonians to administer the affairs of his kingdom.

 

v. 99. How bitter can spring up.] “How a covetous son can spring from a liberal father.” Yet that father has himself been accused of avarice in the Purgatory Canto XX. v. 78; though his general character was that of a bounteous prince.

 

v. 125. Consult your teacher.] Aristole. [GREEK HERE]

De Rep. 1. iii. c. 4. “Since a state is made up of members differing from one another, (for even as an animal, in the first instance, consists of soul and body, and the soul, of reason and desire; and a family, of man and woman, and property of master and slave; in like manner a state consists both of all these and besides these of other dissimilar kinds,) it necessarily follows that the excellence of all the members of the state cannot be one and the same.”

 

v. 136. Esau.] Genesis c. xxv. 22.

 

v. 137. Quirinus.] Romulus, born of so obscure a father, that his parentage was attributed to Mars.

 

CANTO IX

 

v. 2. O fair Clemenza.] Daughter of Charles Martel, and second wife of Louis X. of France.

 

v. 2. The treachery.] He alludes to the occupation of the kingdom of Sicily by Robert, in exclusion of his brother s son Carobert, or Charles. Robert, the rightful heir. See G. Villani, 1. viii. c. 112.

 

v. 7. That saintly light.] Charles Martel.

 

v. 25. In that part.] Between Rialto and the Venetian territory, and the sources of the rivers Brenta and Piava is situated a castle called Romano, the birthplace of the famous tyrant Ezzolino or Azzolino, the brother of Cunizza, who is now speaking. The tyrant we have seen in “the river of blood.” Hell, Canto XII. v. 110.

 

v. 32. Cunizza.] The adventures of Cunizza, overcome by the influence of her star, are related by the chronicler Rolandino of Padua, 1. i. c. 3, in Muratori Rer. It. Script. t. viii. p. 173.

 

She eloped from her first husband, Richard of St. Boniface, in the company of Sordello, (see Purgatory, Canto VI. and VII. ) with whom she is supposed to have cohabited before her marriage: then lived with a soldier of Trevigi, whose wife was living at the same time in the same city, and on his being murdered by her brother the tyrant, was by her brother married to a nobleman of Braganzo, lastly when he also had fallen by the same hand she, after her brother’s death, was again wedded in Verona.

 

v. 37. This.] Folco of Genoa, a celebrated Provencal poet, commonly termed Folques of Marseilles, of which place he was perhaps bishop. Many errors of Nostradamus, regarding him, which have been followed by Crescimbeni, Quadrio, and Millot, are detected by the diligence of Tiraboschi. Mr. Matthias’s ed. v.

1. P. 18. All that appears certain, is what we are told in this Canto, that he was of Genoa, and by Petrarch in the Triumph of Love, c. iv. that he was better known by the appellation he derived from Marseilles, and at last resumed the religious habit.

One of his verses is cited by Dante, De Vulg. Eloq. 1. ii. c. 6.

 

v. 40. Five times.] The five hundred years are elapsed: and unless the Provencal MSS. should be brought to light the poetical reputation of Folco must rest on the mention made of him by the more fortunate Italians.

 

v. 43 The crowd.] The people who inhabited the tract of country bounded by the river Tagliamento to the east, and Adice to the west.

 

v. 45. The hour is near.] Cunizza foretells the defeat of Giacopo da Carrara, Lord of Padua by Can Grande, at Vicenza, on the 18th September 1314. See G. Villani, 1. ix. c. 62.

v. 48. One.] She predicts also the fate of Ricciardo da Camino, who is said to have been murdered at Trevigi, where the rivers (Sile and Cagnano meet) while he was engaged in playing at chess.

 

v. 50. The web.] The net or snare into, which he is destined to fall.

 

v. 50. Feltro.] The Bishop of Felto having received a number of fugitives from Ferrara, who were in opposition to the Pope, under a promise of protection, afterwards gave them up, so that they were reconducted to that city, and the greater part of them there put to death.

 

v. 53. Malta’s.] A tower, either in the citadel of Padua, which under the tyranny of Ezzolino, had been “with many a foul and midnight murder fed,” or (as some say) near a river of the same name, that falls into the lake of Bolsena, in which the Pope was accustomed to imprison such as had been guilty of an irremissible sin.

 

v. 56 This priest.] The bishop, who, to show himself a zealous partisan of the Pope, had committed the above-mentioned act of treachery.

 

v. 58. We descry.] “We behold the things that we predict, in the mirrors of eternal truth.”

 

v. 64. That other joyance.] Folco.

 

v. 76. Six shadowing wings.] “Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings.” Isaiah, c. vi. 2.

 

v. 80. The valley of waters.] The Mediterranean sea.

 

v. 80. That.] The great ocean.

 

v. 82. Discordant shores.] Europe and Africa.

 

v. 83. Meridian.] Extending to the east, the Mediterranean at last reaches the coast of Palestine, which is on its horizon when it enters the straits of Gibraltar. “Wherever a man is,” says Vellutello, “there he has, above his head, his own particular meridian circle.”

 

v. 85. —‘Twixt Ebro’s stream

And Macra’s.]

Eora, a river to the west, and Macra, to the east of Genoa, where Folco was born.

 

v. 88. Begga.] A place in Africa, nearly opposite to Genoa.

 

v. 89. Whose haven.] Alluding to the terrible slaughter of the Genoese made by the Saracens in 936, for which event Vellutello refers to the history of Augustino Giustiniani.

 

v. 91. This heav’n.] The planet Venus.

 

v. 93. Belus’ daughter.] Dido.

 

v. 96. She of Rhodope.] Phyllis.

 

v. 98. Jove’s son.] Hercules.

 

v. 112. Rahab.] Heb. c. xi. 31.

 

v. 120. With either palm.] “By the crucifixion of Christ”

 

v. 126. The cursed flower.] The coin of Florence, called the florin.

 

v. 130. The decretals.] The canon law.

 

v. 134. The Vatican.] He alludes either to the death of Pope Boniface VIII. or, as Venturi supposes, to the coming of the Emperor Henry VII. into Italy, or else, according to the yet more probable conjecture of Lombardi, to the transfer of the holy see from Rome to Avignon, which took place in the pontificate of Clement V.

 

CANTO X

 

v. 7. The point.] “To that part of heaven,” as Venturi explains it, “in which the equinoctial circle and the Zodiac intersect each other, where the common motion of the heavens from east to west may be said to strike with greatest force against the motion proper to the planets; and this repercussion, as it were, is here the strongest, because the velocity of each is increased to the utmost by their respective distance from the poles. Such at least is the system of Dante.”

 

v. 11. Oblique.] The zodiac.

 

v. 25. The part.] The above-mentioned intersection of the equinoctial

circle and the zodiac.

 

v. 26. Minister.] The sun.

 

v. 30. Where.] In which the sun rises every day earlier after the vernal equinox.

 

v. 45. Fourth family.] The inhabitants of the sun, the fourth planet.

 

v. 46. Of his spirit and of his offspring.] The procession of the third, and the generation of the second person in the Trinity.

 

v. 70. Such was the song.] “The song of these spirits was ineffable.

 

v. 86. No less constrained.] “The rivers might as easily cease to flow towards the sea, as we could deny thee thy request.”

 

v. 91. I then.] “I was of the Dominican order.”

 

v. 95. Albert of Cologne.] Albertus Magnus was born at Laugingen, in Thuringia, in 1193, and studied at Paris and at Padua, at the latter of which places he entered into the Dominican order. He then taught theology in various parts of Germany, and particularly at Cologne. Thomas Aquinas was his favourite pupil. In 1260, he reluctantly accepted the bishopric of Ratisbon, and in two years after resigned it, and returned to his cell in Cologne, where the remainder of his life was passed in superintending the school, and in composing his voluminous works on divinity and natural science. He died in 1280. The absurd imputation of his having dealt in the magical art is well known; and his biographers take some pains to clear him of it. Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum, by Quetif and Echard, Lut. Par. 1719. fol. t. 1. p. 162.

 

v. 96. Of Aquinum, Thomas.] Thomas Aquinas, of whom Bucer is reported to have said, “Take but Thomas away, and I will overturn the church of Rome,” and whom Hooker terms “the greatest among the school divines,” (Eccl. Pol. b. 3. 9), was born of noble parents, who anxiously, but vainly, endeavoured to divert him from a life of celibacy and study; and died in 1274, at the age of fourty-seven. Echard and Quetif, ibid. p. 271. See also Purgatory Canto XX. v. 67.

 

v. 101. Gratian.] “Gratian,