Page:The Contrasts in Dante.djvu/30

 "The Prince of the modern Pharisees, having war near the Lateran, and not with Saracens nor with Jews; for every enemy of his was Christian, and none had been to conquer Acre, nor to traffick in the Soldan's territory. Neither his exalted office, nor his Holy Orders did he regard in himself, nor in me that cord which used to render those begirt with it more emaciated."

The palaces of the Colonna with whom the Pope was at war, were near the Lateran; and the war itself was not a holy Crusade for the cause of religion, but one for Pope Boniface's own personal interests. The old Commentators believed that Count Guide's repentance had been, up to a certain time, very real. He conformed most rigidly to the rule of the Minor Friars, donning their garb, and begging his bread publicly in the streets of Ancona. It is related that on one occasion he was riding on an ass into the city of Fano, and near the gate of that town a number of asses began to bray, and the bystanders to laugh. Whereupon the Count, for all that he was a Friar, lost his temper, and said: " There was a time when I have been round Fano with more hundreds of mounted men-at-arms than there are asses here," and he spoke the truth; for as long as it had been in his power, he had always been a standing menace to Bomagna.

Guido compares the Pope's application to him for counsel to the legend that the Emperor Constantino once sought out Pope Sylvester in the caverns under Mount Soracte to cure him of his leprosy.

"But as Constantine besought Sylvester within Soracte to cure him of the leprosy, so did he (Boniface) beseech me as a physician to cure him of the fever of his arrogance (i.e., to gratify his heated desire to be revenged upon the Colonna); he asked of me counsel, and I kept silence, because his words seemed drunken."

The word Maestro, in its primary sense, means an expert