Some critics and commentators accuse Dante of confounding Pope Anastasius with the Emperor of that name. It is however highly probable that Dante knew best whom he meant. Both were accused of heresy, though the heresy of the Pope seems to have been of a mild type. A few years previous to his time, namely, in the year 484, Pope Felix III. and Acacius, Bishop of Constantinople, mutually excommunicated each other. When Anastasius II. became Pope in 496, "he dared," says Milman, Hist. Lat. Christ., I. 349, "to doubt the damnation of a bishop excommunicated by the See of Rome: `Felix and Acacius are now both before a higher tribunal; leave them to that unerring judgment.' He would have the name of Acacius passed over in silence, quietly dropped, rather than publicly expunged from the diptychs. This degenerate successor of St. Peter is not admitted to the rank of a saint. The Pontifical book (its authority on this point is indignantly repudiated) accuses Anastasius of having communicated with a deacon of Thessalonica, who had kept up communion with Acacius; and of having entertained secret designs of restoring the name of Acacius in the services of the Church."
Photinus is the deacon of Thessalonica alluded to in the preceding note. His heresy was, that the Holy Ghost did not proceed from the Father, and that the Father was greater than the Son. The writers who endeavor to rescue the Pope at the expense of the Emperor say that Photinus died before the days of Pope Anastasius.
Cahors is the cathedral town of the Department of the Lot, in the South of France, and the birthplace of the poet Clément Marot and of the romance-writer Calprenède. In the Middle Ages it seems to have been a nest of usurers. Matthew Paris, in his Historia Major, under date of 1235, has a chapter entitled, Of the Usury of the Caursines, which in the translation of Rev. J. A. Giles runs as follows: --
"In these days prevailed the horrible nuisance of the Caursines to such a degree that there was hardly any one in all England, especially among the bishops, who was not caught in their net. Even the king himself was held indebted to them in an uncalculable sum of money. For they circumvented the needy in their necessities, cloaking their usury under the show of trade, and pretending not to know that whatever is added to the principal is usury, under whatever name it may be called. For it is manifest that their loans lie not in the path of charity, inasmuch as they do not hold out a helping hand to the poor to relieve them, but to deceive them; not to aid others in their starvation, but to gratify their own covetousness; seeing that the motive stamps our every deed."
Those within the fat lagoon, the Irascible, Canto VII., VIII.
Whom the wind drives, the Wanton, Canto V., and whom the rain doth beat, the Gluttonous, Canto VI.
And who encounter with such bitter tongues, the Prodigal and Avaricious, Canto VIII.
The Ethics of Aristotle, VII. i. "After these things, making another beginning, it must be observed by us that there are three species of things which are to be avoided in manners, viz. Malice, Incontinence, and Bestiality."
The Physics of Aristotle, Book II.
Genesis, i. 28: "And God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it."
Gabrielle Rossetti, in the Comento Analitico of his edition of the Divina Commedia, quotes here the lines of Florian: --
"Nous ne recevons l'existence
Qu'afin de travailler pour nous, ou pour autrui:
De ce devoir sacr$e quiconque se dispense
Est puni par la Providence,
Par le besoin, ou par l'ennui."
The constellation Pisces precedes Aries, in which the sun now is. This indicates the time to be a little before sunrise. It is Saturday morning.
The Wain is the constellation Charle's Wain, or Bo,otes; and Caurus is the Northwest, indicated by the Latin name of the northwest wind.