The punishment of the sin of Gluttony.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, II.7:--
"Under the shade of melancholy boughs
Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time."
II. Psalms li. 15: "0 Lord, open thou my lips ; and my mouth shall show forth thy praise." .
Erisichthon the Thessalian, who in derision cut down an ancient oak in the sacred groves of Ceres. He was punished by perpetual hunger, till, other food failing him, at last lie gnawed his own flesh. Ovid, Met. VIII., Vernon's Tr.:--
"Straight he requires, impatient in demand,
Provisions from the air, the seas, the land ;
But though the land, air, seas, provisions grant,
Starves at full tables, and complains of want
What to a people might in dole be paid,
Or victual cities for a long blockade,
Could not one wolfish appetite assuage :
For glutting nourishment increased its rage.
As rivers poured from every distant shore
The sea insatiate drinks, and thirsts for more ;
Or as the fire, which all materials burns,
And wasted forests into ashes turns,
Grows more voracious as the more it preys,
Recruits dilate the flame, and spread the blaze
So impious Erisichthon's hunger raves,
Receives refreshments, and refreshments crave
Food raises a desire for food, and meat
Is but a new provocative to eat.
He grows more empty as the more supplied,
Arid endless cramming but extends the void."
This tragic tale of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus is thus told in Josephus, Jewish War, Book VI. Ch. 3, Whiston's Tr.:--
"There was a certain woman that dwelt beyond Jordan ; her name was Mary ; her father was Eleazar, of the village Bethezub, which signifies the house of Hyssop. She was eminent for her family and her wealth, and had fled away to Jerusalem with the rest of the multitude, and was with them besieged therein at this time. The other effects of this woman had been already seized upon, such I mean as she had brought with her out of Perea, and removed to the city. What she had treasured up besides, as also what food she had contrived to save, had been also carried off by the rapacious guards, who came every day running into her house for that purpose. This put the poor woman into a very great passion, and by the frequent reproaches and imprecations she cast at these rapacious villains, she had provoked them to anger against her ; but none of them, either out of the Indignation she had raised against herself, or out of commiseration of her case, would take away her life. And if she found any food, she perceived her labours were for others and not for herself ; and it was now become impossible for her any way to find any more food, while the famine pierced through her very bowels and marrow, when also her passion was fired to a degree beyond the famine itself. Nor did she consult with anything but with her passion and the necessity she was in. She then attempted a most unnatural thing, and, snatching up her son who was a child sucking at her breast, she said, '0 thou miserable infant ! For whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition? As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves. This famine also will destroy us, even before that slavery comes upon us. Yet are these seditious rogues more terrible than both the other. Come on, be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets, and a byword to the world ; which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of the Jews.' As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and ate the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this the seditious came in presently, and, smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her that they would cut her throat immediately, if she did not show then what food she had gotten ready. She replied, that she had saved a very portion of it for them ; and withal uncovered what was left of her son. Hereupon they were seized with a horror and amazement of mind, and stood astonished at the sight, when she said to them : 'This is mine own son, and what hath been done was mine own doing. Come, eat of this food; for I have eaten of it myself. Do not you pretend to be either more tender than a woman, or more compassionate than a mother. But if you be so scrupulous, and do abominate this my sacrifice, as I have eaten the one-half, let the rest be reserved for me also.' After which those men went out trembling, being never so much affrighted at anything as they were at this, and with some difficulty they left the rest of that meat to the mother. Upon which the whole city was full of this horrid action immediately ; and while everybody laid this miserable case before their own eyes, they trembled as if this unheard of action had been done by themselves So those that were thus distressed by the famine were very desirous to die, and those already dead were esteemed happy, because they had not lived long enough either to hear or to see such miseries."
.
Shakespeare, King Lear, V.3:--
"And in this habit
Met I my father with his bleeding rings,
Their precious stones new lost."
In this fanciful recognition of the word omo (homo, man) in the human face, so written as to place the two o's between the outer strokes of the m, the former represent the eyes, and the latter the nose and cheekbones :
IMAGE Brother Berthold, a Franciscan monk of Regensburg, in the thirteenth century, makes the following allusion to it in one of his sermons. See Wackernagel, Deutsches Lesebuch, 1.678. The monk carries out the resemblance into still further detail: --
"Now behold, ye blessed children of God, the Almighty has created you soul and body. And he has written it under your eyes and on your faces, that you are created in his likeness. He has written it upon your very faces with ornamented letters. With great diligence are they embellished and ornamented. This your learned men will understand, but the unlearned may not understand it. The two eyes are two o's. The h is properly no letter ; it only helps the others ; so that homo with an h means Man. Likewise the brows arched above and the nose down between them are an m, beautiful with three strokes. So is the ear a d, beautifully rounded and ornamented. So are the nostrils beautifully formed like a Greek e, beautifully rounded and ornamented. So is the mouth an i, beautifully adorned and ornamented. Now behold, ye good Christian people, how skillfully he has adorned you with these six letters, to show that ye are his own, and that he has created you ! Now read me an o and an m and another o together ; that spells homo . Then read me a d and an e and an i together ; that spells dei. Homo dei, man of God, man of God !"
Forese Donati, the brother-in-law and intimate friend of Dante. "This Forese," says Buti, "was a Citizen of Florence, and was brother of Messer Corso Donati, and was very gluttonous ; and therefore the author feigns that he found him here, where the Gluttons are punished."
Certain vituperative sonnets, addressed to Dante, have been attributed to Forese. If authentic, they prove that the friendship between the two poets was not uninterrupted. See Rossetti, Early Italian Poets, Appendix to Part II.
The same desire that sacrifice and atonement may be complete.
Matthew xxvii. 46 : "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Outside the gate of Purgatory, where those who had postponed repentance till the last hour were forced to wait as many years and days as they had lived impenitent on earth, unless aided by the devout prayers of those on earth. See Canto IV.
Nella, contraction of Giovanna, widow of Forese. Nothing is known of this good woman but the name, and what Forese here says in her praise.
Covino, Descriz. Geograf. dell'Italia, p.52, says : "In the district of Arborea, on the slopes of the Gennargentu, the most vast and lofty mountain range of Sardinia, spreads an alpine country which in Dante's time, being almost barbarous, was called the Barbagia."
Sacchetti, the Italian novelist of the fourteenth century, severely criticises the fashions of the Florentines, and their sudden changes, which he says it would take a whole volume of his stories to enumerate. In Nov. 178, he speaks of their wearing their dresses "far below their arm-pits," and then "up to their ears ;" and continues, in Napier's version, Flor. Hist., 11.539:--
"The young Florentine girls, who used to dress so modestly, have not changed the fashion of their hoods to resemble courtesans, and thus attire they move about laced up to the throat, with all sorts of animals hanging as ornaments about their necks. Their sleeves, or rather their sacks, as they should be called, -- was there ever so useless and pernicious a fashion ! Can any of them reach a glass or take morsel from the table without dirtying herself or the cloth by the things is knocks down? And thus do the young men, and worse ; and such sleeves are made even for sucking babes. The women go about in hoods and cloaks ; most of the young men without cloaks , in long, flowing hair, and if they throw off their breeches, which from their smallness may easily be done, all is off; for they literally stick their posteriors into a pair of socks and expend a yard of cloth on their wristbands, while more stuff is put into a glove than a cloak hood. However, I am comforted by one thing, and that is, that all now have begun to put their feet in chains, perhaps as a penance for the many vain things they are guilty of ; for we are but a day in this world, and in that day the fashion is changed a thousand times : all seek liberty, yet all deprive themselves of it : God has made our feet free, and many with long pointed toes to their shoes can scarcely walk : he has supplied the legs with hinges, and many have so bound them up with close lacing that they can scarcely sit : the bust is tightly bandaged up ; the arms trail their drapery along ; the throat is rolled in a capuchin ; the head so loaded and bound round with caps over the hair that it appears as though it were sawed off. And thud I might go on for ever discoursing of female absurdities, commencing with the immeasurable trains at their feet, and proceeding regularly upwards to the head, with which they may always be seen occupied in their chambers ; some curling, some smoothing, and some whitening it, so that they often kill themselves with colds caught in these vain occupations."