In this canto the subject of the preceding is continued, namely, the punishment of Avarice and Prodigality.
To please the speaker, Pope Adrian the Fifth, (who, Canto XIX. 139, says, "Now go, no longer will I have thee linger,") Dante departs without further question, though not yet satisfied.
See the article Cabala at the end of Paradise.
This is generally supposed to refer to Can Grande della Scala. See Inf I. Note 101.
The inn at Bethlehem.
The Roman Consul who rejected with disdain the bribes of Pyrrhus, and died so poor that he was buried at the public expense, and the Romans were obliged to give a dowry to his daughters Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 8, calls him "powerful in poverty." Dante also extols him in the Convito, IV. 5.
Gower, Conf. Amant., V.13:--
"Betwene the two extremites
Of vice stont the propertes
Of vertue, and to prove it so
Take avarice and take also
The vice of prodegalite,
Betwene hem liberalite,
Which is the vertue of largesse
Stant and governeth his noblesse.
This is St. Nicholas, patron saint of children, sailors, and travellers. The incident here alluded to is found in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, the great storehouse of mediaeval wonders.
It may be found also in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art II.62, and in her version runs thus :--
"Now in that city there dwelt a certain nobleman who had three daughters, and, from being rich, he became poor ; so poor that there remained no means of obtaining food for his daughters but by sacrificing them to an infamous life ; and oftentimes it came into his mind to tell them so, but shame and sorrow held him dumb. Meantime the maidens wept continually, not knowing what to do, and not having bread to eat; and their father became more and more desperate. When Nicholas heard of this, he thought it a shame that such a thing should happen in a Christian land; therefore one night, when the maidens were asleep, and their father alone sat watching and weeping, he took a handful of gold, and, tying it up in a hankerchief, he repaired to the dwelling of the poor man. He considered how he might bestow it without making himself known, and, while he stood irresolute, the moon coming from behind a cloud showed him a window open; so he threw it in, and it fell at the feet of the father, who, when he found it, returned thanks, and with it he portioned his eldest daughter. A second time Nicholas provided a similar sum, and again he threw it in by night ; and with it the nobleman married his second daughter. But he greatly desired to know who it was that came to his aid ; therefore he determined to watch, and when the good saint came for the third time, and prepared to throw in the third portion, he was discovered, for the nobleman seized him by the skirt of his robe, and flung himself at his feet, saying, '0 Nicholas ! servant of God ! why seek to hide thyself?' and he kissed his feet and his :hands. But Nicholas made him promise that he would tell no man. And many other charitable works did Nicholas perform in his native city."
If we knew from what old chronicle, or from what Professor of the Rue du Fouarre, Dante derived his knowledge of French history, we might possibly make plain the rather difficult passage which begins with this line. The spirit that speaks is not that of the King Hugh Capet, but that of his father, Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris. He was son of Robert the Strong. Pasquier, Rech. de La France, VI. I, describes him as both valiant and prudent, and says that, "although he was never king, yet was he a maker and unmaker of kings," and then goes on to draw an elaborate parallel between him and Charles Martel.
The "malignant plant" is Philip the Fair, whose character is thus drawn by Milman, Lat. Christ., Book XI. Ch. 8:--
"In Philip the Fair the gallantry of the French temperament broke out on rare occasions ; his first Flemish campaigns were conducted with bravery and skill, but Philip ever preferred the subtle negotiation, the slow and wily encroachment; till his enemies were, if not in his power, at least at great disadvantage, he did not venture on the usurpation or invasion. In the slow systematic pursuit of his object he was utterly without scruple, without remorse. He was not so much cruel as altogether obtuse to human suffering, if necessary to the prosecution of his schemes ; not so much rapacious as, finding money indispensable to his aggrandizement, seeking money by means of which he hardly to discern the injustice or the folly. Never was man or monarch so intensly selfish as Philip the Fair : his own power was his ultimate scope ; he extended so enormously the royal prerogative, the influence of France, because he was King of France. His rapacity, which persecuted the Templars, his vindictiveness, which warred on Boniface after death as through life, was this selfishness in other forms."
He was defeated at the battle of Courtray, 1302, known in history as the battle of the Spurs of Gold, from the great number found on the field after the battle. This is the vengeance imprecated upon him by Dante.
For two centuries and a half, that is, from 1060 to 1316, there was either a Louis or a Philip on the throne of France. The succession was as follows:--
| Philip I. the Amorous | 1060 |
| Louis VI. the Fat | 1108 |
| Louis VII. the Young | 1137 |
| Philip II. Augustus | 1180 |
| Louis VIII. the Lion | 1223 |
| Louis IX. the Saint | 1226 |
| Philip III. the Bold | 1270 |
| Philip IV. the Fair | I285 |
| Louis X. | 1314 |
It is doubtful whether this passage is to be taken literally or figuratively. Pasquier, Rech. de la France, Liv. VI. Ch. I (thinking it is the King Hugh Capet that speaks), breaks forth in indignant protest as follows "From this you can perceive the fatality there was in this family from its beginning to its end, to the disadvantage of the Carlovingians. And moreover, how ignorant the Italian poet Dante was, when in his book entitled Purgatory he says that our Hugh Capet was the son of a butcher. Which word, once written erroneously and carelessly by him, has so crept into the beads of some simpletons, that many who never investigated the antiquities of our France have fallen into this same heresy. Francois de Villon, more studious of taverns and ale-houses than of good books, says in some part of his works,
'Si feusse les hoirs de Capet52. It is doubtful whether this passage is to be taken literally or figuratively. Pasquier, Rech. de la France, Liv. VI. Ch. I (thinking it is the King Hugh Capet that speaks), breaks forth in indignant protest as follows "From this you can perceive the fatality there was in this family from its beginning to its end, to the disadvantage of the Carlovingians. And moreover, how ignorant the Italian poet Dante was, when in his book entitled Purgatory he says that our Hugh Capet was the son of a butcher. Which word, once written erroneously and carelessly by him, has so crept into the beads of some simpletons, that many who never investigated the antiquities of our France have fallen into this same heresy. Francois de Villon, more studious of taverns and ale-houses than of good books, says in some part of his works,
'Si feusse les hoirs de Capet52. It is doubtful whether this passage is to be taken literally or figuratively. Pasquier, Rech. de la France, Liv. VI. Ch. I (thinking it is the King Hugh Capet that speaks), breaks forth in indignant protest as follows "From this you can perceive the fatality there was in this family from its beginning to its end, to the disadvantage of the Carlovingians. And moreover, how ignorant the Italian poet Dante was, when in his book entitled Purgatory he says that our Hugh Capet was the son of a butcher. Which word, once written erroneously and carelessly by him, has so crept into the beads of some simpletons, that many who never investigated the antiquities of our France have fallen into this same heresy. Francois de Villon, more studious of taverns and ale-houses than of good books, says in some part of his works,
'Si feusse les hoirs de Capet
Qtti fut extrait de boucherie.'
And since then Agrippa Alamanni, in his book on the Vanity of Science, chapter Of Nobility, on this first ignorance declares impudently against the genealogy of our Capet. If Dante thought that Hugh the Great, Capet's father, was a butcher, he was not a clever man. But if he used this expression figuratively, as I am willing to believe, those who cling to the shell of the word are greater block-heads still. . . .
"This passage of Dante being read and explained by Luigi Alamanni, an Italian, before Francis the First of that name, he was indignant at the imposture, and commanded it to be stricken out. He was even excited to interdict the reading of the book in his kingdom. But for my part, in order to exculpate this author, I wish to say that under the name of Butcher he meant that Capet was son of a great and valiant warrior. . . . . If Dante understood it thus, I forgive him ; if otherwise, he was a very ignorant poet."
Benvenuto says that the name of Capet comes from the fact that Hugh, in playing with his companions in boyhood,"was in the habit of pulling off their caps and running away with them." Ducange repeats this story from an old chronicle, and gives also another and more probable origin of the name, as coming from the hood or cowl which Hugh was in the habit of wearing.
The belief that the family descended from a butcher was current in Italy in Dante's time. Villani, IV. 3, says : "Most people say that the father was a great and rich burgher of Paris, of a race of butchers or dealers in cattle."
When the Carlovingian race were all dead but one. And who was he? The Ottimo says it was Rudolph, who became a monk and afterwards Archbishop of Rheims. Benvenuto gives no name, but says only "a monk in poor, coarse garments." Buti says the same. Daniello thinks it was some Friar of St. Francis, perhaps St. Louis, forgetting that these saints did not see the light till some two centuries after the time here spoken of. Others say Charles of Lorraine ; and Biagioli decides that it must be either Charles the Simple, who died a prisoner in the castle of Péronne, in 922 ; or Louis of Outre-Mer, who carried to England by Hugh the Great, in 936. The Man in Cloth of Grey remains as great a mystery as the Man in the Iron Mask.
Hugh Capet was crowned at Rheims, in 987. The expression which follows shows clearly that it is Hugh the Great who speaks, and not Hugh the founder of the Capetian dynasty.
Until the shame of the low origin of the family was removed by the marriage of Charles of Anjou, brother of Saint Louis, to the daughter of Raimond Berenger, who brought him Provence as her dower.
Making amends for one crime by committing a greater. The particular transaction here alluded to is the seizing by fraud and holding by force these provinces in the time of Philip the Fair.
Charles of Anjou.
Curradino, or Conradin, son of the Emperor Conrad IV., a beautiful youth of sixteen, who was beheaded in the square of Naples by order of Charles of Anjou, in 1268. Voltaire, in his rhymed chronology at the end of his Annales de l'Empire, says,
"C'est en soixante-huit que la main d'un
bourreau
Endeavouring to escape to Sicily after his defeat at Tagliacozzo, he was carried to Naples and imprisoned in the Castel dell' Uovo. "Christendom heard with horror," says Milman, Lat. Christ., Book XI. Ch. 3, "that the royal brother of St. Louis, that the champion of the Church, after a mock trial, by the sentence of one judge, Robert di Lavena,--after an unanswerable pleading by Guido de Suzaria, a famous jurist,--had condemned the last heir of the Swabian house--a rival king who had fought gallantly for his hereditary throne--to be executed as a felon and a rebel on a public scaffold. So little did Conradin dread his fate, that, when his doom was announced, he was playing at chess with Frederick of Austria 'Slave,' said Conradin to Robert of Bari, who read the fatal sentence, 'do you dare to condemn as a criminal the son and heir of kings? Knows not your master that he is my equal, not my judge ?' He added, 'I am a mortal, and must die ; yet ask the kings of the earth if a prince be criminal for seeking to win back the heritage of his ancestors. But if there be no pardon for me, spare, at least, my faithful companions ; or if they must die, strike me first, that I may not behold their death. They died devoutly, nobly. Every circumstance aggravated the abhorrence ; it was said perhaps it was the invention of that abhorrence--that Robert of Flanders, the brother of Charles, struck dead the judge who had presumed to read the iniquitous sentence. When Conradin knelt, with uplifted hands, awaiting the blow of the executioner, he uttered these last words, 'O my mother ! how deep will be thy sorrow at the news of this day !' Even the followers of Charles could hardly restrain their pity and indignation. With Conradin died his young and valiant friend, Frederick of Austria, the two Lancias, two of the noble house of Donaticcio of Pisa. The inexorable Charles would not permit them to be buried in consecrated ground."
Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor of the Schools, died at the convent of Fossa Nuova in the Campagna, being on his way to the Council of Lyons, in 1274. He is supposed to have been poisoned by his physician, at the
instigation of Charles of Anjou.
Charles of Valois, who caigne into Italy by invitation of Boniface the Eighth, in 1301. See Inf. VI. 69.
There is in old French literature a poem entitled Le Tournoyement de l'Antechrist, written by Hugnes de Méry, a monk of the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés, in the thirteenth century, in which be describes a battle between the Virtues under the banner of Christ, and the Vices under that of Antichrist.
In the Vison of Piers Ploughman , there is a joust between Christ and the foul fiend :--
"Thanne was Feith in a fenestre, 74. There is in old French literature a poem entitled Le Tournoyement de l'Antechrist, written by Hugnes de Méry, a monk of the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés, in the thirteenth century, in which be describes a battle between the Virtues under the banner of Christ, and the Vices under that of Antichrist
In the Vison of Piers Ploughman , there is a joust between Christ and the foul fiend :--
"Thanne was Feith in a fenestre,
By the aid of Charles of Valois the Neri party triumphed in Florence, and the Bianchi were banished, and with them Dante.
There is an allusion here to the nickname of Charles of Valois, Senzaterra, or Lackland.
Charles the Second, son of Charles of Anjou. He went from France to recover Sicily after the Sicilian Vespers. In an engagement with the Spanish fleet under Admiral Rugieri d'Oria, he was taken prisoner. Dante says he sold his daughter, because he married her for a large sum of money to Azzo the Sixth of Este.
Aeneid, III.56. "Cursed thirst of gold, to what dost thou not drive the hearts of men."
The flower-de-luce is in the banner of France. Borel, Tresor de Recherches, cited by Roquefort, Glossaire, under the word Leye, says "The ori-flamme is so called from gold and flame ; that is to say, a lily of the marshes. The lilies are the arms of France on a field of azure, which denotes water, in memory that they (the French) came from a marshy country. It is the most ancient and principal banner of France, sown with these lilies, and was borne around our kings on great occasions."
Roquefort gives his own opinion as follows : "The Franks, afterwards called French, inhabited (before entering Gaul properly so called) the environs of the Lys, a river of the Low Countries, whose banks are still covered with a kind of iris or flag of a yellow colour, which differs from the common lily and more nearly resembles the flower-de-luce of our arms. Now it seems to me very natural that the kings of the Franks, having to choose a symbol to which the name of armorial bearings has since been given, should take in its composition a beautiful and remarkable flower, which they had before their eyes, and that they should name it, from the place where it grew in abundance, flower of the river Lys."
These are the lilies of which Drayton speaks in his Ballad of Agincourt.
"....when our grandsire great,
and suppression of the Order of the Knights Templars, in 1307-1312. See Milman, Lat. Christ., Book XII. Ch. 2, and Villani, VIII. 92, who says the act was committed per cupidigia di guadagnare, for love of gain ; and says also : "The king of France and his children had afterwards much shame and adversity, both on account of this sin and on account of the seizure of Pope Boniface."
What he was saying of the Virgin Mary, line 19.
The brother of Dido and murderer of her husband. Aeneid, I., 350. "He, impious and blinded with the love of gold, having taken Sichaeus by surprise, secretly assassinates him before the altar, regardless of his sister's great affection."
The Phrygian king, who, for his hospitality to Silenus, was endowed by Bacchus with the fatal power of turning all he touched to gold. The most laugh
able thing about him was his wearing ass's ears, as a punishment for preferring the music of Pan to that of Apollo Ovid, XI., Croxall's Tr. :
"Pan tuned the pipe, and with his rural song
Joshua vii. 21: "When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty
shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them ; and behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it."
Acts v. I, 2: "But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, and kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet."
The hoof-beats of the miraculous horse in the Temple of Jerusalem, when Heliodorus, the treasurer of King Seleucus, went there to remove the treasure. 2 Maccabees iii. 25 : "For there appeared unto them an horse with a ternble rider upon him, and adorned with a very fair covering, and he ran fiercely, and smote at Heliodors with his forefeet, and it seemed that he that sat upon the horse had complete harness of gold."
Aeneid, 111.49, Davidson's Tr. :
"This Polydore unhappy Priam had formerly sent in secrecy, with a great weight gold, to be brought up by the king of Thrace, when he now began to distrust the arms of Troy, and saw the city with close siege blocked up. He, [Polymnestor,) as soon as the power of the Trojans was crushed, and their fortune gone, espousing Agamemnon's interest and victorious arms, breaks every sacred bond, assassinates Polydore, and by violence possesses his gold. Cursed thirst of gold, to what dost thou not drive the hearts of men !'
Lucinius Crassus, surnamed the Rich. He was Consul with Pompey, and on one occasion displayed his vast wealth by giving an entertainment to the populace, at which the guests were so numerous that they occupied ten thousand tables. He was slain in a battle with the Parthians, and his head was sent to the Parthian king, Hyrodes, who had molten gold poured down its throat. Plutarch does not mention this circumstance in his Life of Crassus, but says:--
"When the head of Crassus was brought to the door, the tables were just taken away, and one Jason, a tragic actor of the town of Tralles, was singing the scene in the Bacchae of Euripides concerning Agave. He was receiving much applause, when Sillaces coming to the room, and having made obeisance to the king, threw down the head of Crassus into the midst of the company. The Parthians receiving it with joy and acclamations, Sillaces, by the king's cormmand, was made to sit down, while Jason handed over the costume of Pentheus to one of the dancers in the chorus, and taking up the head of Crassus, and acting the part of a bacchante in her frenzy, in a rapturous, impassioned manner, sang the lyric passages,
'We've hunted down a mighty chase to-day,
This is in answer to Dante's question, line 35:--
"And why only
Thou dost renew these praises well deserved?"
The occasion of this quaking of the mountain is given, Canto XXI. 58:--
"It trembles here, whenever any soul
An island in the Aegean Sea, in the centre of the Cyclades. It was thrown up by an earthquake, in order to receive Latona, when she gave birth to Apollo and Diana, the Sun and the Moon.
I>Luke ii. 13, 14: "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."
Gower, Conf. Amant., III.5:--
"When Goddes sone also was bore,
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.065
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.067
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.068
Dans Conradin son fils éteint un sang si beau."
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.069
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.071
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.074
And cryde a fili David,
As dooth a heraud of armes,
Whan aventrous cometh to justes.
Old Jewes of Jerusalem
For joye thei songen,
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.
"Than I frayned at Feith,
What all that fare by-mente,
And who sholde juste in Jerusalem.
'Jhesus,' he seide,
'And fecche that the fend claymeth,
Piers fruyt the Plowman
'Who shal juste with Jhesus?' quod I, 'Jewes or scrybes ? ,
"'Nay,' quod he : 'The foule fend,
And fals doom and deeth.'"
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.075
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.076
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.079
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.082
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.086
Claiming the regal seat,
By many a warlike feat
Lopped the French lilies."
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.091
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.097
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.103
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.106
Pleased the low taste of all the vulgar throng ;
Such songs a vulgar judgment mostly please :
Midas was there, and Midas judged with these."
See also Hawthorne's story of The Golden Touch in his Wonder-Book.
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.109
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.112
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.113
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.115
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.116
And from the mountain bring the noble prey.
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.122
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.128
Feels itself pure, so that it soars, or moves
To mount aloft, and such a cry attends it."
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.130
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.136
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 20.140
He sent his aungel down therfore,
Whom the shepherdes herden singe .
Pees to the men of welwillinge
In erthe be amonge us here."