In this Sixth Bolgia the Hypocrites are punished.
"A painted people there below we found,
Who went about with footsteps very slow,
Weeping and in their looks subdued and weary."
Chaucer, Knightes Tale, 2780: --
"In his colde grave
Alone, withouten any compagnie."
And Gower, Conf. Amant.: --
To muse in his philosophie
Sole withouten compaignie.
The Fables of Aesop, by Sir Roger L'Estrang, IV.:
"There fell out a bloody quarrel once betwixt the Frogs and the Mice, about the sovereignty of the Fenns; and whilst two of their champions were disputing it at swords point, down comes a kite powdering upon them in the interim, and gobbles up both together, to part the fray."
Both words signifying "now"; mo, from the Latin modo; and issa, from the Latin ipsa; meaning ipsa hora. "The Tuscans say mo," remarks Benvenuto, "the Lombards issa."
"When he is in a fright and hurry, and has a very steep place to go down, Virgil, has to carry him altogether," says Mr. Ruskin. See Canto XII., Note 2.
Benvenuto speaks of the cloaks of the German monks as "ill-fitting and shapeless."
The leaden cloaks which Frederick put upon malefactors were straw in comparison. The Emperor Frederick II. is said to have punished traitors by wrapping them in lead, and throwing them into a heated caldron. I can find no historic authority for this. It rests only on tradition; and on the same authority the same punishment is said to have been inflicted in Scotland, and is thus described in the ballad of "Lord Soulis," Scott's Ministrelsy of the Scottish Border, IV. 256: --
"On a circle of stones they placed the pot,
On a circle of stones but barely nine;
They heated it red and fiery hot,
Till the burnished brass did glimmer and shine.
"They roll'd him up in a sheet of lead,
A sheet of lead for a funeral pall,
And plunged him into the caldron red,
And melted him, -- lead, and bones, and all."
We get also a glimpse of this punishment in Ducange, Glo. Capa Plumbea, where he cites the case in which one man tells another: "If our Holy Father the Pope knew the life you are leading, he would have you put to death in a cloak of lead."
Comedy of Errors, IV. 2: -- "A devil in an everlasting garment hath him."
Bolgna was renowned for its University; and the speaker, who was a Bolognese, is still mindful of his college.
Florence, the bellissima e famosissima figlia di Roma, as Dante calls it, Convito, I. 3.
An order of knighthood, established by Pope Urban IV. in 1261, under the title of "Knights of Santa Maria." The name Frati Gaudenti, or "Jovial Friars," was a nickname, because they lived in their own homes and were not bound by strict monastic rules. Napier, Flor. Hist. I. 269, says: --
"A short time before this a new order of religious nighthood under the name of Frati Gaudenti began in Italy: it was not bound by vows of celibacy, or any very severe regulations, but took the usual oaths to defend widows and orphans and make peace between man and man: the founder was a Bolognese gentleman, called Loderingo di Liandolo, who enjoyed a good reputation, and along with a brother of the same order, named Catalano di Malavolti, one a Guelph and the other a Ghibelline, was now invited to Florence by Count Guido to execute conjointly the office of Podestà. It was intended by thus dividing the supreme authority between two magistrates of different politics, that one should correct the other, and justice be equally administered; more especially as, in conjunction with the people, they were allowed to elect a deliberative council of thirty-six citizens, belonging to the principal trades without distinction of party."
Farther on he says that these two Frati Gaudenti "forfeited all public confidence by their peculation and hypocrisy." And Villani, VII. 13: "Although they were of different parties, under cover of a false hypocrisy, they were of accord in seeking rather their own private gains than the common good."
A street in Florence, laid waste by the Guelfs.
Hamlet, I. 2: --
"Nor windy suspiration of forced breath."
Caiaphas, the High-Priest, who thought "expediency" the best thing.
Annas, father-in-law of Caiaphas.
The great outer circle surrounding this division of the Inferno.
He may have heard in the lectures of the University an exposition of John viii. 44:"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it."