The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 01
W. H. V. Reade, The Moral System of Dante's Inferno (1909; reprint, New York: Kennikat, 1969), is so intent on distinguishing God's justice from man's and on showing Aquinas's influence on Dante that he neglects the importance of the effects of human action, which Dante weighs along with the motivation. Allan H. Gilbert, Dante's Conception of Justice (1925; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1965), gives a much better sense of the relation between earthly and divine justice in the Comedy

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 02
For the four objects, see Bonaventure, Speculum animae, 3 (Opera omnia, vol. 7); Aquinas, ST, 2.2ae, q.25, and 1.2ae q.73, a.9. I do not mean to imply that either of them is not concerned with man's actions in relation to society on the contrary, Bonaventure says that for a harmonious political life, man must be rightly ordered to society as well as to God and his fellows (Collationes in Hexaemeron S); see also Matthew M. de Benedictis, The Social Thought of St. Bonaventure (1946; reprint, Westport: Greenwood, 1972), 28. Aquinas considers a sin against a public person more serious than one against a private person because of the numbers affected, but taken as individuals, not as an entity. Aquinas also recognizes the three orders the individual must respect of reason, of human, and divine law and is concerned with the state as an organ of justice on earth. But he separates political issues from questions of sin whereas Dante intentionally confuses them, or sets the treatment of sin and virtue in a political context. Brunetto Latini comes closer to Dante in the Tresor, Bk. 2, in which he discusses vices and virtues in terms of Aristotle's Ethzs, and the governing of cities, and notes that pride, envy, etc., lead to enmity and fighting, which disrupt law and destroy cities (2.131.8).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 03
The social implications explain all the differences between Dante and Aquinas, which G. Busnelli lists, L'Etica Nicomachea e l'ordinamento morale dell~~~lnferno di Dante (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1907), 153: for Aquinas, neutrality, heresy, blasphemy, suicide are worse; for Dante, theft, lying, hypocrisy, bad counsel.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 04
Bonaventure, Aquinas, Vincent of Beauvais, Brunetto Latini all deal with sin this way.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 05
See R. Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, I primordi della civilta' fiorentina: im pulsi interni, influssi esterni e cultura politica (Italian trans. Eugenio DupreTheseider), 5.598.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 06
See Hell 15.113, 20.73 ff., 21.49, 23.95, 27.30,49,52, 30.65, 32.26,27,56, 33.83; cf. Pg. 14.24, 92, 16.115. The Arno is the river most frequently cited, but it is by no means the only one.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 07
Dante also uses families for contrast: Frederick II is in Hell, his son, Manfredi, in Purgatory, his mother, Costanza, in Paradise; Forese Donati is in Purgatory, his sister, Piccarda, in Paradise, his brother, Corso, destined for Hell; Guido da Montefeltro is in Hell, his son, Bonconte, in Purgatory; Ubaldino is in Purgatory, his son, Ruggieri, in Hell; Ezzelino da Romano is in Hell, his sister, Cunizza, in Paradise.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 08
The wood is this life, both as Augustine describes it, an immense forest of traps and dangers (Confessions 10.35), and as the romance hero encounters it when he goes off into the wilderness to seek adventures, trials which test and perfect him so that he can return to society and serve it properly.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 09
The wolf is connected with greed throughout the Comedy, particularly clerical greed, see Hell 7.8, Pg. 20.10, Pr. 9.132, 27.55. Benvenuto da Imola, discussing the prophecy of the veltro, notes that if the author intends it to be a Roman prince, the avarice he will oppose is that of prelates and pastors of the church, in whom avarice has its source, continually increasing, 1.57.1 prefer to follow the early commentators who gloss the three animals as lust, pride, and avarice, as befits the moral allegory of the inner man in the first canto (see Pietro, 32 ff..,, Guido, 9, the Ottimo, 1.6, Benvenuto, 1.38-40; Jacopo gives vainglory for the lonza, but agrees on the other two, 1.109). At the same time, the animals suggest Florence and Rome, as mentioned in chapter one, and therefore also have a political meaning for the public man.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 10
Benvenuto comments that Virgil was really born under consuls, not under Julius Caesar, and claims Dante intentionally has him change that fact because Virgil admires Caesar and prefers to derive his origin from his reign, 1.45-46. For a detailed study of Dante's treatment of Virgil and his poetry in the Comedy, see Robert Hollander, II Virgilio Dantesco: Tragedia nella "Commedia" (Florence: Olschki, 1983), and Teodolinda Barolini, Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the "Comedy" (Princeton: Princeton University, forthcoming).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 11
The neutral angels are an apocryphal concept, but effective in making Dante's point. For a discussion of the issue, see John Freccero, "Dante's Per Se Angels: The Middle Ground in Nature and in Grace," Studi danteschi 39 (1962), S-38.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 12
See the Ottimo, 1.30, Guido, S9, Jacopo, 1.131, and Pietro, 69. Pietro does not accept the notion that Celestine had to retire from the world to lead a holy life ("he could be as holy and spiritual in the papacy as in a hermitage") and says that he acted "pusillanimously" in renouncing the papacy. In a later recension, he expresses some doubts about Celestine and suggests that the figure might be Diocletian or Develicianus, who renounced the empire (V/S 80, 81). Benvenuto, who denies the identification, admits that Celestine's renunciation was generally attributed to "great baseness," but insists that Dante could not have meant Celestine because he was "magnanimus" before, during, and after the papacy, though he notes that Celestine was unable to keep the incorrigible cardinals from their simony and other cupidity, 1.117-18. Busnelli, L'Etica, 21 comments that the problem with the renunciation is the evil that came with Boniface's election.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 13
Dante also condemns himself to some extent in this section through identification with Francesca and her exploitation of noble-sounding lyric conventions, he too engaged in the selfish and self-deceptive aspects of the love tradition about which he began to have doubts as early as the Vita Nuova. By the Comedy, he has come to see his role in that tradition as antisocial rather than ennobling.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 14
Louis R. Rossi, "The Devouring Passion, Inferno vI," Italza 42 (1965), 24, making a connection with Paradise, 27.106-10, comments that the breakdown of the moral organism is an effect of the dissolution of the social order, and the fault lies with the leaders. He also notes that there are covert allusions to Corso Donati and Charles of Valois in Hell 6, and that Corso comes up again on the ledge of gluttony in Purgatory 24, where the destruction of his body and the ruin of his city are discussed, 26-28.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 15
Benvenuto says the two just men are Guido Cavalcanti and Dante (1.236), although Dante gives no hint of this; in Purgatory, 16.121, Dante suggests there are only three just men left in the whole region of Lombardy. Early commentators try to place all the other men Dante asks Ciacco about: the Ottimo has Tegghiaio, Jacopo, and Arrigo in canto 16, Mosca in 29 (1.100); Benvenuto puts Theghiaius and Jacobus among sins against nature, Musca and Arrigus among sins against others, while Farinata sinned against the faith (1.238). Farinata, Tegghiaio, and Jacopo all question Dante about life in Florence when he meets them. Unfortunately, no one identifies Arrigo, though Pietro calls him Arrigus de Arrigucijs (V/S, 129); the point may be that everyone knows some Arrigo who belongs in Hell.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 16
Boethius, in the Consolation of Philosophy, defends Fortune's acts as beneficial to those she abandons, but he does not see her as a positive force; Dante himself presents different views of fortune: as random chance, Conviuio, 4.11, as the fate of an individual, Pr. 8.139, and as providence, Pr. 27.145 and Monarchy, 2.9. For connections between fortune and history in Dante, see Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert (Princeton: Princeton University 1979), Appendix.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 17
The tonsure on their heads and the broken circle they form in their movement may both be reflections of the wheel of Fortune, whose turning they have obstructed and which operates as an instrument of providence. Dante lures the reader into making the same mistake they did with the line "mal dare e mal tener lo mondo pulcro" (7.58), which seems to mean "the bad giving and holding of the beautiful world" until the first three words of the next line, "ha tolto lor," corrects that impression; "the beautiful world" becomes the object of tolto rather than of dar and tenet, that is, their bad giving and holding robbed them of the beautiful world, which we now understand to be heaven, not this earth.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 18
Landino, cited by Natalino Sapegno, in his notes to his edition, La Divina Commedia (Milan: Ricciardi, 1957), 98. Fiorenzo Forti, in his article on Filippo in the Enciclopedia Dantesca, 2.873-74, reports that Filippo's brother, claiming offenses by Dante, received Dante's confiscated goods as a concession from the commune, and henceforth, according to Benvenuto, opposed Dante's return to Florence. Forti also notes that the Chiose Selmi related a quarrel between Filippo and Dante in which Filippo slapped the poet.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 19
Cf. Aquinas on kinds of anger, deserving of praise if in accord with right reason, whereas unreasonable patience can be the hotbed of many vices (ST, 2.2ae, q.158, ad).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 20
Robert Hollander pointed out to me that the source of the storm simile which heralds the angel's appearance in canto 9 is the storm simile in Aeneid 2.416 ff., which precedes the destruction of another proud city, Troy.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 21
See N. Ottokar, "La condanna postuma di Farinata degli Uberti," Archivio storico italiano 77 (1919),155-63, on Farinata. For the other trials, see Nicolai Rubinstein, "Studies on the Political History of the Age of Dante," Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi danteschi (Florence: Sansoni, 1965),1.227, and Friedrich Bock, "I processi di Giovanni XXII contro i Ghibellini delle Marche," Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo 57 (1941), 19-68. According to Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, 5.609, the remains of heretics were exhumed and their tombs defaced, which may also be behind Dante's presentation of them in open tombs.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 22
See Joseph A. Mazzeo, "Dante and Epicurus," Comparative Literature 10 (1958),106-20, for contemporary views of the Epicureans. According to Aquinas (ST, 2.2ae, q.11), a heretic is one who picks and chooses what he wishes to believe.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 23
Cavalcanti's son, Guido, was apparently also involved in factional struggles- Dino Compagni describes a feud in which both he and Corso Donati were involved Cronica, ed. Gino Luzzato (Turin: Einaudi, 1968),1.21.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 24
Dante's error was in assuming that Farinata and Cavalcanti were aware of the present, a natural mistake since they know the future. The irony Is that the present, which was all they cared for or believed in, is the one thing now denied them- at the end of time, when there is no future and all is present m eternity‹ the one present they did not acknowledge‹their knowledge will be altogether dead, "tutta morta." Their perception of time Is yet another modification of the limitations of factionalism; concentrating on the immediate, the local, they fail to comprehend the larger context.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 25
The cardinal's remark is cited by both the Ottimo (1.192: "se anima e, io l'ho perduta per li Ghibellini") and Guido (200); the emperor's is cited by Ernst Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second trans. E. O. Lorimer (1931; reprint, New York: Ungar, 1957), 352.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 26
Guido repeats the story of Frederick asking how the soul of a man who was enclosed in a vat to die could escape (200). Dante's positive and negative views of Frederick were discussed in chapter two. Giovanni Villani, Istorie Fiorentine (Milan: Societa Tipografica dei Classici Italiani, 1802), also praises Frederick for his wisdom and valor, but calls him an enemy of the church, who led an "epicurean" life with no thought to the next life (6.1), and describes his part in Florence's factional squabbles (6.33).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 27
The early commentators accept the identification of the pope as the heretic. Bruno Nardi, Nuova Lectura Dantis: 11 canto Xl dell'Inferno (1951; reprint, Rome: Signorelli, 1955), discusses the historical confusion. He shows that Dante followed Gratian's Decretum, making Pope Anastasius an adherent of the Acacian heresy, presumably because he had favorably received the deacon of the eastern church, who did follow the heresy.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 28
Reade, The Moral System, devotes an entire chapter to explaining why Dante drags it in at all and argues for the seventh circle as the section of bestial malice on the basis of sodomy and cruelq, suggesting that if fraud is peculiarly human, force must be bestial. Alfred Triolo places bestiality in the ninth circle, as excessive malice, "Matta Bestialita in Dante's Inferno: Theory and Image," Traditio 24 (1968), 247-92; he makes an interesting point about the guardians of Hell, that they become less bestial and more human as the sinners themselves become more bestial. Busnelli points out cautiously that any excess of vice, even lust and gluttony, had its bestial aspect for Aristotle- similarly, Dante shows bestial lust in the Minotaur, a combination of fraud and violence in the man/beast, Gerione, and bestiality in the thief, Vanni Fucci, L'Etica, 71-72 107, 150.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 29
The Ottimo (1.223) and Jacopo (1.243) identify the centaurs with the soldiers of tyrants; here, however, it is the centaurs who control the tyrants.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 30
Dorothy Sayers, Introductory Papers on Dante, (London: Methuen, 1954) 141-42, cites an early commentator, Gelli, who suggested that the sodomite makes sterile what should be fertile, the usurer makes breed what was meant to be sterile. For more on usury and related sins, see below, chapter six.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 31
Also among the tyrants is Opizzo da Este, who was believed to have been murdered by his son and successor; Dante speaks of the latter as his "stepson" (12.111-12) either to emphasize the unnaturalness of the act, or as a gratuitous insult. According to Alfonso Lazzari, in "11 marchese Obizzo 11 d'Este signore di Ferrara nel poema di Dante e nella storia," Giornale dantesco 39 (1936), 12750, Obizzo was supposed to be the man to whom Venedico Caccianemico pandered his sister (canto 18), as sordid in his private as in his public life.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 32
According to the Anonimo Fiorentino, as cited by Singleton in his commentary on Hell, 203. The Ottimo says Rinier robbed prelates of the church at the command of Frederick 11, as a result of which he and his descendants were perpetually deprived of all rights in Florence (1.235).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 33
See William A. Stephany, "Pier della Vigna's Self-Fulfilling Prophecies," Traditio 38 (1982),193-212, and A. Huillard-Breholles, Vie et Correspondence de Pierre de la Vigne (Paris: H. Plon, 1895).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 34
Pier's responsibiliq for his fate may explain why Virgil says his own description of Polydorus is not sufficient for Dante; the soul who speaks from the tree in the Aeneid is not a suicide, but an innocent victim of treachery and murder, what Pier pretends to be. Cf. Kurt Ringger, "Pier della Vigna o la poesia del segno," Medioevo Romanzo 5 (1978), 87, who connects the soul's plant name with his fate. Benvenuto, who praises both Pier and Frederick, the first for his great knowledge of secular and canon law and the art of writing, the other for his magnificence and building, seems to hold the emperor indirectly responsible for Pier's suicide and that of his own son, Henry (1.444).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 35
Ironically, a rumor claimed that Pier wrote a letter at the pope's instigation in opposition to one of Frederick's and that he revealed all Frederick's secrets to the pope, according to the Ottimo (1.246), and Jacopo (1.255), which Jacopo offers as the cause of his disgrace. Stephany, "Pier della Vigna's Prophecies," points out that the courtiers who turned against him out of envy and brought about his disgrace were probably the "fruits of his vineyard," products of his curricular reforms at the University of Naples.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 36
There is a simple justice to Pier's suicide; unable to endure the public scorn of his disgrace, he took his own life, robbing himself, by the same blow, of salvation. When Pier says "ingiusto fece me contra me giusto" (13.72: "he made me unjust against my just self"), he means that by executing himself he was unjustly punishing himself because he was innocent, but since his final act was a sin against the highest justice, it made him "unjust," guilty, so that his final act, ironically, vindicates the world's view of him. Though a public servant, Pier shows himself to be as self-centered in his death as he was in his life, and selfdestructive in both.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 37
See Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert, chapter 1, for an interesting discussion of this passage and the suggestion that Rome here is an anti-Eden.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 38
Benvenuto, for whom the statue represents the ages of the world, identifies the church with the terra-cotta foot because it was originally simple and humble like earth but, after the Donation of Constantine, became richer, stronger, and more beautiful and flourishes while the empire declines (1.491). See chapter two, fn. 16, for other early interpretations of the Veglio.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 39
Dante does not depart from the historical-political significance of the statue, as Busnelli suggests, L'Etica, 163, but joins it with the moral; see Busnelli for a discussion of medieval moral interpretations, 176-80.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 40
See his Dante's Swift and Strong (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978), from which the information in the rest of this paragraph is drawn. The book is extremely useful despite Kay's denial that homosexuality is the sin punished in this section. Even if sodomy was a social as well as sexual perversion in the Bible, for Dante the one does not preclude the other. Dante suggests homosexual overtones in Brunetto's greeting, giving Dante the eye, pulling at his hem, following his skirts, and it is clear from the earliest commentators that sodomy meant homosexuality for Dante's audience: Pietro is particularly specific, calling it coitus with males, "coitum cum masculis" (178); Jacopo and the Ottimo discuss various kinds of sexual aberration, of which this, being against nature, is the worst. None of them objects to the claim that the men named in this section were homosexual. Jacopo even notes that Boniface, who transferred the bishop, Andrea dei Mozzi, "fu simile sodomita" (1.286). A Pezard, Dante sous la pluie de feu (Paris: Vrin, 1950), had, of course, also raised the question and supplied an interesting substitute, the perversion of language, which is effective for Brunetto, Priscian, and Andrea, but not for the others. Like Kay's work, it adds to our understanding of the section, even if one cannot accept the premise that these sinners were not homosexual. Dante may well have perceived a certain ambivalence in Brunetto's loyalties to Florence, since Brunetto chose to write the Tresor in French, which he called "la parleure la plus delitable et plus commune a toutes gens," 1.1.1. On the larger question of homosexuality in the Middle Ages, see John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 41
The connection between rules of sexual behavior and rules that establish order in language is found in Alanus de Insulis, De planctu Naturae, who uses grammatical terms to discuss sexual perversion; laws of grammar were made to control the natural corruption of speech so men could communicate; sexual mores are established so that men can preserve the forms of family on which larger units of society are based. For Dante, the family is the first stage of human society (Monarchy, 1.5, and Convivio, 4.4.2); homosexuality, if indulged to the exclusion of other sexual activities, impedes procreation and eliminates families. Dante emphasizes this aspect of the sin by his use of the words famiglia, 15.22, figliuol, 15.31 and 37, and imagine paterna, 15.83. He describes the group of souls as a famiglia; Brunetto calls Dante his "son," not unusual usage among poets in the Comedy, but double-edged in this context. Dante is also the son of Florence, which will reject him; perverse, like so many of her distinguished men, she chooses to be sterile in respect of her good sons. She is too corrupt, Brunetto implies, to bear good fruit, 15.65-66. As Amilcare lannucci puts it, "The homosexual steps outside of the natural order of birth, procreation, death, and seeks his own image. In so doing he refuses to accept his own mortality." He thinks he can live through his writings, but not even Brunetto's major work was to be of importance for any length of time ("Brunetto Latini: 'come l'uom s'etterna'," NEMLA Italian Studies 1(1977),17-28.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 42
The possibility of a pun in the words Dante uses to describe that transfer implying other relations between the bishop and Boniface, was discussed in chapter two.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 43
In the Tresor, discussed by Charles T. Davis, "Brunetto Latini and Dante," Studi medievali s. 3, 8 (1967), 421-50. Davis gives details of Brunetto's life and work and points out interesting connections between Brunetto and Pier della Vigna. See also H. Wieruszowski, "Brunetto Latini," Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome, 1970), 3-10.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 44
His prophecies of Dante's glorious future and the benevolence of heaven refer to Dante's fame on earth; Dante's remark, "you taught me how man makes himself eternal" (15.85), does not refer to his soul, in the sense that Statius will attribute his own salvation to Virgil, but to his writing. That is the eternity Brunetto wanted and got for himself: "Sieti raccomandato il mio Tesoro,/nel qual io vivo ancora, e piu non cheggio" (15.119-20: "Let me commend to you my Treasure, in which I yet live, and I ask no more"). It is an ironic twist of fate that Dante is more effective in keeping Brunetto eternal by mentioning the book in his own poem.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 45
A lot of attention is paid to dress in this section of Hell: Brunetto grabs Dante's hem (15.24), follows "at his skirts" (15.40), the Florentines recognize his dress (16.8), and at the end, Dante takes off his corda and Virgil uses it to summon the monster of fraud. Villani says the Florentine dress was the most noble and honorable of all Italian garb because it was like the ancient Romans' (Istorie Fiorentine, 12.4). Dante's dress clearly contrasts with the nakedness of the sinners, the corruption that lurks beneath the noble dress they wore in life. The corda which summons fraud (16.106 ff.) must be connected with false appearance or posture; Pietro connects it with Dante's deceptions of women (180), Jacopo with attempts to acquire temporal goods (1.294).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 46
In his commentary on the Politics, cited by Singleton in his commentary on Hell, 182.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 47
The Ottimo (1.319) comments that one of the Gianfigliazzi is put here to represent all of them.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 48
The early commentators note the different aspects of fraud in the different parts of the monster. The Ottimo explains that it has the face of a just man because the beginning of fraud has a just and benign appearance, with the hairy parts of a beast of prey and the chest of a serpent because of varied and venomous wills, decorated with deceptive goods and pleasures, and the tail of a scorpion because fraud hurts with its end, its goal, (1.314-15). The Ottimo also emphasizes the harm to others from fraud (1.309 and 313). Pietro connects Gerione with a king of Spain who had three kingdoms and with three kinds of fraud, in word (the face), deed (the scorpion), and in the thing itself, which includes merchandise (the serpent) (181-82). He notes that fraud travels far by letters and embassies. A modern commentator, Giuseppe Garrani, 11 pensiero di Dante in tema di economia monetaria e creditizia (Palermo: Cassa di Risparmio, 1965), suggests that the monster represents fraudulent contracts. The commercial aspects of fraud will be discussed below in chapter six.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 49
The moats are spanned by a bridge, which suggests that fraud is the link from violence to treachery, a worse form of fraud practiced by denying all natural and assumed bonds; from fraud, one falls into the bottom of the abyss, where there is not even the semblance of a society, simply living death.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 50
For a discussion of the ten divisions in relation to the structure of Hell, see my "Malebolge as the Key to the Structure of Dante's Inferno,"Romance Philology 22 (1967), 456-66.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 51
The horned devils suggest cuckolds who are among the victims of this sin, and the whipping, artificial stimulation to sex; what they did to others is now being done to them.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 52
The crowds in Rome had come on pilgrimage to receive the indulgences promised by the pope, complete pardon for all sins, remission of guilt and punishment, provided the sins were or would be confessed. This procedure reverses the normal order of awareness of sin, confession, absolution, and satisfaction. It is not too great a leap from the reversed order to the absolution of a sin before it is committed, which the same pope, Boniface VIII, fraudulently offered Guido da Montefeltro (canto 27). One wonders if Dante is not suggesting that the church has not only been ordering the traffic of sinners, but even defrauding them with false promises of salvation by undermining the importance of confession. Dante himself as pilgrim makes two confessions in Purgatory and acknowledges the power of papal indulgences indirectly through Casella's story (Pg. 2), but one assumes that Casella was sincerely repentant.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 53
Dante names Isifile (Hypsipyle) and Medea. Isifile had deceived all her countrywomen (18.92-93), the women of Lemnos, who had killed their husbands because they had been unfaithful, making the deceivers the victims on a national scale; Isifile deceived them to save her father, but was herself deceived by Jason. Medea killed her brother and deceived her father in order to run off with Jason and later killed Jason's new bride and her own children in order to avenge herself on him.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 54
Both the Ottimo (1.497) and Jacopo (1.455) relate that Geri del Bello, Dante's cousin, was a falsifier of money as well as a sower of discord, in order to explain why he is mentioned in canto 29, devoted to the falsifiers, although he is in the ninth section of disseminators of scandal. Benvenuto discusses Florence's particular problem with the thirst for revenge, both public and private, and commends the wise man, Virgil, for dissuading Dante from getting involved (2.391).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 55
Symbolically, Dante suggests that flatterers are whores in the person of Taide, a figure from a Terence play cited by Cicero; the words Dante quotes were actually spoken by the whore's lover to a parasite. Dante's change makes the indictment of flattery even stronger; the flattering parasite is a whore because he prostitutes language. They are set in dung because praise that is not only excessive but potentially harmful is mental excrement, the waste product of the human mind; Benvenuto comments that they are in human excrement which smells worse than other animals' because flattery is peculiarly human (2.25).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 56
Several of them are alluded to in the canto in a distorted way emphasizing the church's perversion of its functions: baptism by the fontlike holes in which the popes are buried; confession when Dante talks to the pope "like the brother who confesses the perfidious assassin" (19.49-50), suggesting a comparison between the assassin who murders for money and the pope who contributes to the death of souls for money; the laying on of hands is the sacrament bought and sold by simoniacs; and the gift of tongues, which came to the apostles with the pentecostal flames, is parodied in the flames which dance on the feet of the sinners.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 57
Susan Noakes, "Dino Compagni and the Vow in San Giovanni: Inferno XIX, 16-21," Dante Studies 86 (1968), 46, suggests that the importance of simony for Dante lies in the harm it works on man and the earthly communiq, not principally in the insult it offers to God. Hence, presumably, Dante classes it as a category of fraud rather than of violence.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 58
Cf. Pietro, "the said pope caused the rebellion of Sicily and Apulia, or consented to it" (200), and the Ottimo, who claims that the pope was bribed to consent to the rebellion and wrote letters to the conspirators, although he did not use the papal seal (1.350).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 59
See Pietro, 202-03; Guido, 379, the Ottimo, 1.357-58; Jacopo, 1.337. Demons, being angels, albeit fallen, have a higher intellect than men and can know things not accessible to men. See Aquinas on divination (ST 2.2ae, q.95). For a full discussion of many of the vexed problems of canto 20, see Robert Hollander, "The Tragedy of Divination in Inferno xx," in his Studies in Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1980; Hollander shows how Dante rewrites his classical sources, particularly Virgil, to defend him from the charge of false prophecy.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 60
See Rubinstein, "Studies," 227. Paget Toynbee, Dante Alighieri, His Life and Works (1900; rev. 1910; reprint New York: Harper, 1965), 101-02, and Elisabetta Cavallari (La fortuna di Dante nel trecento [Florence: Perella, 1921], 40), tell the story apropos of Galeazzo Visconti. On Virgil as seer, see Domenico Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages (1908; reprint from 2d ed., Hamden: Archon, 1966), pt. 2.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 61
It is interesting that in the prophecies, Michel Scot refers to the "dog" (catcalls) of Verona long before the birth of Can Grande, whose name means "big dog"; it gives an added significance to Dante's prophecy of the veltro if the audience had some knowledge of "dog" prophecies in the past. Dante, of course, died before the ones Villani mentions came true. Michel Scot also predicted his own death by a falling stone and always wore a helmet except at the consecration of the host, where a stone eventually fell on him. Benvenuto says he took off the helmet for public show, not out of love for Christ (2.89); Jacopo tells an amusing story about him, that he entertained by bringing in all his dishes by magic from the royal houses of Europe (1.351).

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For Dante, Christ's death gave special meaning to human government in that redemption prepared the way for man to reestablish the earthly paradise; he implies this connection by the painstaking accuracy of his reference to the harrowing of hell (1266 years and one day less than five hours before, 21.11214), which broke the bridge from this section to the next.

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This contrasts with the description of tourneys and skirmishes at the beginning of canto 22, reminiscent of Bertran de Born's Be'm platz lo gais temps de Pascor, which exalts the pleasure of fighting for its own sake, with no sense of a serious purpose. The furious action and noise of such events is compared to the devils' activity and the music of their leader, who made a trumpet of his ass (21.139). Since man is distinguished from animals by his political nature, abuse of the structure instituted to govern him in society is a denial of his humanity, so the sinners in this section are portrayed as little more than animals, dolphins, frogs, a mouse among cats, a duck, while the devils are like dogs, cats, and a falcon.

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Attempts have been made to read the names of contemporary officials into the devils' names, see Edward Moore, Studies in Dante, 2d Series (Oxford 1899), 233.

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In this connection, it is interesting that Dante is threatened by devils twice in Hell, first at the gates of Dis, between the fifth and sixth circles, in an attempt to keep him out of the city, and again between the fifth and sixth sections of the Malebolge, to catch and punish him for a crime he did not commit. Both Benvenuto (2.113) and Villani (Istorie Fiorentine, 9.134) insist on Dante's innocence of barratry, Villani saying that he was banished for belonging to the White party, and for no other crime.

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Cf. Aquinas; property is necessary for three reasons: man makes more of an effort for his own things; there is more order in human affairs if each has charge of particular things; the state is more peaceful if each man is content with his own (ST, 2.2ae, q.66, a.2). But Aquinas considers robbery by force worse than theft by deceit because he is concerned with personal morality and effects on the individual, whereas Dante is concerned with the public. Jacopo points out that there are two kinds of possession: God's, who created all, and man's, who has the use of things; but clear title to possessions is important among men because without it there would be nothing but confusion and war (1.387-88). On the possibility that theft may also represent different kinds of financial crimes, see chapter six below.

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For political overtones in the classical allusions in this episode, e.g., the destruction of cities and political exiles from tyranny, see my article on canto 24, in the forthcoming California Lectura Dantis, ed. Allen Mandelbaum, where I also discuss the possibility that Dante presents himself as a thief insofar as he steals from the classical poets, but for a socially beneficial purpose.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 68
Chiose anonime, cited by Singleton in his commentary on Hell, 437.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 69
An attempt to deny this definition of the sin of the eighth section was made by Anna Hatcher, "Dante's Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro," Dante Studies 88 (1970), 109-17, but I find it over-subtle.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 70
Dante has reason to identify with Ulysses, the central figure of this canto, not only because of the temptation to counsel deception, but also because of the journey he made to an unknown world. Dante describes his own journey in sea metaphors and seems to be haunted by the fear of making the mistake Ulysses did of trusting too far in his own capacity: when he reaches the shore of Purgatory, in sight of which Ulysses drowned he girds himself with the reed of humility, and when he reaches the top of heaven, he looks down once more on Ulysses' "mad course" (Pr. 27.82-83). For Dante, Ulysses is an antiAeneas, wandering to indulge his own curiosity rather than to establish a new civilization. Neither son, nor father, nor proper love for wife could restrain Ulysses, he says, making the contrast with Aeneas who left Troy with his father on his shoulder and his son's hand in his. Guido notes that the son, father, and wife should have been sufficient to keep Ulysses from his "vagabunda inquisitione" (537), but he commends Ulysses' speech to his men (540 ff.) as Benvenuto does, though cautiously (2.294). Amilcare lannucci, "Ulysses' 'Folle Volo': The Burden of History," Medioevo Romanzo 3 (1976), 410-45, offers a careful analysis of Dante's treatment of the hero as a Christian tragedy, his sin being the seeking of knowledge beyond imposed limits. For an overall view of the Ulysses problem, see J. A. Scott, "Inferno XXVI: Dante's Ulysses," Lettere italiane 23 (1971), 14586.

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Boniface seduces Guido by offering to absolve him of the sin before he commits it, using the keys with which he claims he can open and close heaven. Guido, who cannot resist another opportunity to display his cleverness, uses the excuse that it would be worse not to obey the pope, but in his very answer ("Father, since you absolve me of that sin into which I must now fall," 27.10809) he reveals the weakness of his position. He knows that he will sin as he should know that he cannot be absolved before he sins, something the devil who comes for his soul points out.

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Ricardo J. Quinones, Dante Alighieri (Boston: Twayne, 1979), 125-28.

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 73
The continuous shifts in allegiance in those wars make one wonder what purpose they serve: Apulia is the scene first of the battle of Turnus against Aeneas, forces opposing the future Rome, then of the Punic wars in which Apulia fought with Rome, then of crusades under Robert Guiscard against Saracens and Greeks, and finally of the defeat of the new empire, the betrayal of Manfred, and the deception of Conradin.

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Whether Bertran had the kind of political effect he attributes to himself here is not certain, but as William Paden points out in "Bertran de Born in Italy," in Italian Literature, Roots and Branches, ed. G. Rimanelli and K. J. Atchity (New Haven: Yale, 1976), 39-66, Dante's audience thought he did; the same is true of the attribution to him of the lament for the young king, which Dante echoes in this canto. On Bertran's role in Dante's poem, see Teodolinda Barolini, "Bertran de Born and Sordello: The Poetry of Politics in Dante's Comedy," PMLA 94 (1979), 395-405.

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The popular medieval belief was that Mohammed was a Christian, or was trained by Christians. The Ottimo reports that he was taught by a heretic monk and some say, but it is not true, that he was a cardinal who turned against the church when he failed to get the papacy (1.482).

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The Ottimo points out that some aspects of alchemy are all right, like the attempt to alter towards a more perfect form, or to make alloys, but faking is wrong (1.494-95), cf. Jacopo (1.453). According to Jacopo, both alchemists and counterfeiters are falsifiers of coins, of money (1.312). Both the Ottimo and Benvenuto (2.432-3) cite Aristotle on the importance of money, invented for the common use and good of men, Benvenuto going into more detail about the evolution of money from barter to metal, weight to sign.

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Villani mentions several of them and tells their stories, noting that they appear in this canto of the Comedy (Istorie Fiorentine, 7.4 and 79).

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 78
One soul asks "qual diavol ti tocca?" (32.108), meaning "what the hell is wrong with you?" but literally "what devil touches you?" Dante is, of course, the "devil" who helps punish the soul, a role he gladly assumes among the traitors, as in his refusal to open Alberigo's eyes with the words "e cortesia fu lui esser villano" (33.150: "and it was courtesy to be rude to him").

The Political Vision of the Comedy, ch. 03: 79
In fact, this passion to destroy the enemy affects even Dante, who tears the hair and kicks the head of Bocca in canto 32. The cannibal act is an apt symbol of the banquet at which the crime against the guest is committed, literally in the case of Alberigo, which is picked up in the fruit metaphors scattered throughout the episode. Dante does not allow us to shrink from the horror of the scene; indeed, he leaves us with a particularly disturbing doubt: Ugolino describes his sons offering themselves as food when they see him chewing on his hands from hunger; after the sons die, the father, blind from hunger, gropes for them and the last line he speaks is "then hunger did more than sorrow could" (33.75). Presumably he means that hunger killed him before sorrow, but since two lines later he is again gnawing at the skull, his teeth "strong on the bone like a dog's" (33.78), Dante forces us at least to entertain the thought that he might also have tried to eat his sons. The mere fact that one can consider it, even to reject it, is sufficiently horrible for Dante's purpose in characterizing betrayal .

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Both are gracious to the poet, unlike so many in Hell, because they seek his sympathy, wanting him to view them as they see themselves, as victims, and both distort their stories in order to win him over. Both are shut into small spaces and killed with those they love, with the implication that they are imprisoned and destroyed by their own vices, which also destroy those they love. Francesca tells her story partly to condemn her husband, who will end up in this last circle of Hell because he killed his brother, as Ugolino speaks in order to condemn his enemy, Ruggieri, blaming him for the death of his sons, though Ugolino, long before he was imprisoned in the tower, had sacrificed his family to political ambition and revenge. See Villani, Istorie Fiorentine, 7.120 and 127.

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It is unorthodox if we take it literally, despite certain biblical passages: in John 13:27, Jesus gives sop to one who will betray him "and after the morsel, Satan entered into him"; in Psalm S4:16, "let death come upon them [friends who betray] and let them go down alive into hell." Guido comments that just as the apostle had said "I am alive, but not 1, Christ lives in me," so a man obstinate in sin might say "the demon lives in me" (705).

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Antaeus seems to be an exception, the kind of giant nature left off creating because the combination of huge body with reason was too potent (Hell 31.4957).

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Benvenuto (2.552) says that the long arms of Satan figure the long power of this king who has many kings under him, his power extending east and west.

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Jacopo notes that according to Statius, Amphyon was so polished and graceful a speaker that everyone went to work on the walls of Thebes just to hear him (1.488). The Ottimo calls him a "most wise and ornate speaker, through whose wise and ornate speech the state and the well-being of the city of Thebes grew and was preserved" (1.549). Boccaccio, in the Genealogie Deorum Gentilium Libri, ed. Vincenzo Romano (Bari: Laterza, 1951), interprets Amphyon's building the city in the same way, that he persuaded ignorant, crude, and obstinate men by his mellifluous speech, to come together, live civilly, and surround the city for public defense, 1.274.

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The colors of his three faces are echoed in the three steps to the gate of Purgatory, because the knowledge of evil is essential to a proper confession. The colors also suggest the political factions of Dante's time, which, like Satan, work against the divine order: the black and off-white faces, the Black and White Guelphs; the off-white and red, the Guelphs and Ghibellines, whose emblems changed, but who always had red on white or white on red. See Villani, Istorie Fiorentine, 6.43.