Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/490

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. v. MAY 25, 1912.

First of all an important word as to this text itself. Dr. Moore (' Textual Criticism,' xix.) discovered that in MS. " 66 " 1. 53

' is omitted and the space left blank. Note the omission (with some contusion of the text) of this line also in p. which MS. shows other traces of

relations with (56 This is a singular omission,

and may possibly have been designed to spare Bonifazi'o ; or, if this or a similar MS. were the exemplar, it may have been due to the accident of such a defect in this (p. 58! )."

It may further be added that the lines heading this section are supposed to have been "forestalled in their allusion to Boniface by another that occurs at C. vi. 69, where the "teste piaggia " is regarded by Bianchi, Buti. Scartazzini, Mr. Tozer, and' others as indisputably referring to him. while Dean Plumptre holds the phrase to point more probably to Charles of Valois. But the trustworthiness of the text under review is, despite deletions or transpositions, practically unchallenged and incontrovertible. It only remains to inquire whether Dante's impeachment of this Pope is equally so. Let me state briefly the pros and cons of the question.

Mr. Edmund E. Gardner in The Month, April, 1899. states, in an article therein headed ' The Silence of Dante, 7 that the Dominican. Niccolo Boccasini, took the name of Benedict XI.

'' as a mark of devotion to the memory of his predecessor. Boniface VIII. (Benedetto Gaetam), the victim of Philip of France " ;

and that

" in burning words the Pope denounces the sacrilege committed upon the person of his pre- decessor at Anagni, apparently in his presence, in noairis etiam oeulis, excommunicates the assailants of Boniface, and summons them to appear before him. The Bull is full of curiously Dantesque phraseology an(1 u is noteworthy that Dante in his vindication of the Pope whom he regarded as Christ's most unworthy vicar and his own deadliest foe, is almost more Catholic in his language than that Pope's friend and successor : ' I see the golden lilies entei Alagna, and in His Vicar Christ made captive I see Him another time derided ; I see renewed the vinegar and gall, and between living thiever I see Him slain.' "

The passage thus translated is from ' Purg.,' xx. 86-90. Strictly speaking, the words are not Dante's, but the prophetic utterances of Hugh Capet, though, of course they voice the poet's reverence for the Papa Office as distinct from an unworthy occupant Scartazzini curtly comments on " ne Vicario " : " nella persona di Bonifazi( scellerato, ma pure papa/' " Fiordaliso ' is more accurately rendered fleurs-de-lis than

golden lilies " ; the " vivi ladroni " repre- ent William of Norgareto and Sciarra volonna. two ringleaders who, under orders rom Philip the Fair, effected Boniface's mprisonment at Anagni in 1303.

Platina's description of this Pontiff stands hus in an abridged form :

" He was a man of great learning and experi- nce, as having lived long in public, and risen to he Popedom by all the degrees of honour, though .ot without some imputation of pride and ambi- ion. For whilst he was Cardinal-priest of St. Martin's-in-the-Mount, he was so desirous of the >apal dignity that he omitted no fraudulent or ither indirect means that might, in his opinion, onduce to his obtaining of it."

Lines 52 and 53 denote, of course, the astonishment of Nicholas at, apparently, eeing Boniface join him before his time, the Scritto ' (of 1. 54) or ' Book of the Future/ a fiction of the poet, having revealed Boni- r ace's damnation as due on or about the 12th of October. 1303, three years sub- sequent to this interview with Dante, the Pope being then inter rivos. The next refer-
 * nce to Boniface occurs in 11. 56-7:

Per lo qual non temesti torre a inganno La bella'donna.

"Inganno" alludes to the artifices of Boni- face in effecting the abdication of Celestine V. ; "la bella donna" signifies the Church.. Also 1. 77 points again to him and Nicholas's mistaken identity; and C. ;xxvii., 1. 70, furnishes the poet's last allusion in the ' Inferno,' where Guido da Montefeltro's famous imprecation on the Pontiff is given II gran prete a cui mal prencla.

Finally, Boniface's death is beautifully described in ' Purg.,' xx. 86-90, and Dante's ultimate reference to him is in 'Par.,' xxx. (preceded by an oblique fling in C. x. 125-6)^ Thus, with sustained and awful poetic justice, Dante rings down the curtain upon the life and misdeeds of the Pope whom he regarded as " Christ's most unworthy Vicar and his own deadliest foe."

A word must be said of a mutilation of the text yet more drastic than the omission mentioned above ; it is touched upon by Dr. Moore (I.e., p. xviii) :

" Compare with this [the omission of seyuendo sacerdozio in ' Par.,' xi. 5 1 the condemnation by the Spanish Inquisition in 1(U2 of three passages (viz., ' Inf.,' xi. 8-9 ; xix. 100-17 ; and ' Par.,' ix. 136 to end), and the prohibition of their insertion in any future edition. This prohibition was. ] believe, a brutnm f til men, as I cannot find that any Edd. of the ' Divina Commedia ' ever were published in Spain. The condemnation of the passages, however, has led to their erasure in