Purgatorio

Canto XXIV

Buonagiunta da Lucca—Pope Martin IV, and others.

Nor speech the going, nor the going that¹Slackened; but talking we went bravely on,Even as a vessel urged by a good wind.And shadows, that appeared things doubly dead,From out the sepulchres of their eyes betrayedWonder at me, aware that I was living.And I, continuing my colloquy,²Said: “Peradventure he goes up more slowlyThan he would do, for other people’s sake.But tell me, if thou knowest, where is Piccarda;³Tell me if anyone of note I seeAmong this folk that gazes at me so.”“My sister, who, ’twixt beautiful and good,I know not which was more, triumphs rejoicingAlready in her crown on high Olympus.”So said he first, and then: “ ’Tis not forbiddenTo name each other here, so milked awayIs our resemblance by our dieting.This,” pointing with his finger, “is Buonagiunta,⁴Buonagiunta, of Lucca; and that faceBeyond him there, more peaked than the others,Has held the holy Church within his arms;⁵From Tours was he, and purges by his fastingBolsena’s eels and the Vernaccia wine.”⁶He named me many others one by one;And all contented seemed at being named,So that for this I saw not one dark look.I saw for hunger bite the empty air⁷Ubaldin dalla Pila, and Boniface,⁸Who with his crook had pastured many people.I saw Messer Marchese, who had leisure⁹Once at Forli for drinking with less dryness,And he was one who ne’er felt satisfied.But as he does who scans, and then doth prizeOne more than others, did I him of Lucca,Who seemed to take most cognizance of me.He murmured, and I know not what Gentucca¹⁰From that place heard I, where he felt the wound¹¹Of justice, that doth macerate them so.“O soul,” I said, “that seemest so desirousTo speak with me, do so that I may hear thee,And with thy speech appease thyself and me.”“A maid is born, and wears not yet the veil,”Began he, “who to thee shall pleasant makeMy city, howsoever men may blame it.Thou shalt go on thy way with this prevision;If by my murmuring thou hast been deceived,True things hereafter will declare it to thee.But say if him I here behold, who forthEvoked the new-invented rhymes, beginning,¹²Ladies, that have intelligence of love?”¹³And I to him: “One am I, who, wheneverLove doth inspire me, note, and in that measureWhich he within me dictates, singing go.”“O brother, now I see,” he said, “the knotWhich me, the Notary, and Guittone held¹⁴Short of the sweet new style that now I hear.I do perceive full clearly how your pensGo closely following after him who dictates,Which with our own forsooth came not to pass;And he who sets himself to go beyond,No difference sees from one style to another”;And as if satisfied, he held his peace.Even as the birds, that winter tow’rds the Nile,Sometimes into a phalanx form themselves,Then fly in greater haste, and go in file;In such wise all the people who were there,Turning their faces, hurried on their steps,Both by their leanness and their wishes light.And as a man, who weary is with trotting,Lets his companions onward go, and walks,Until he vents the panting of his chest;So did Forese let the holy flockPass by, and came with me behind it, saying,“When will it be that I again shall see thee?”“How long,” I answered, “I may live, I know not;Yet my return will not so speedy be,But I shall sooner in desire arrive;Because the place where I was set to liveFrom day to day of good is more depleted,And unto dismal ruin seems ordained.”“Now go,” he said, “for him most guilty of it¹⁵At a beast’s tail behold I dragged alongTowards the valley where is no repentance.Faster at every step the beast is going,Increasing evermore until it smites him,And leaves the body vilely mutilated.Not long those wheels shall turn,” and he upliftedHis eyes to heaven, “ere shall be clear to theeThat which my speech no farther can declare.Now stay behind; because the time so preciousIs in this kingdom, that I lose too muchBy coming onward thus abreast with thee.”As sometimes issues forth upon a gallopA cavalier from out a troop that ride,And seeks the honor of the first encounter,So he with greater strides departed from us;And on the road remained I with those two,Who were such mighty marshals of the world.¹⁶And when before us he had gone so farMine eyes became to him such pursuivantsAs was my understanding to his words,Appeared to me with laden and living boughsAnother apple-tree, and not far distant,From having but just then turned thitherward.¹⁷People I saw beneath it lift their hands,And cry I know not what towards the leaves,Like little children eager and deluded,Who pray, and he they pray to doth not answer,But, to make very keen their appetite,Holds their desire aloft, and hides it not.Then they departed as if undeceived;And now we came unto the mighty treeWhich prayers and tears so manifold refuses.“Pass farther onward without drawing near;The tree of which Eve ate is higher up,¹⁸And out of that one has this tree been raised.”Thus said I know not who among the branches;Whereat Virgilius, Statius, and myselfWent crowding forward on the side that rises.“Be mindful,” said he, “of the accursed ones¹⁹Formed of the cloud-rack, who inebriateCombated Theseus with their double breasts;And of the Jews who showed them soft in drinking,Whence Gideon would not have them for companions²⁰When he tow’rds Midian the hills descended.”Thus, closely pressed to one of the two borders,On passed we, hearing sins of gluttony,Followed forsooth by miserable gains;Then set at large upon the lonely road,A thousand steps and more we onward went,In contemplation, each without a word.“What go ye thinking thus, ye three alone?”Said suddenly a voice, whereat I startedAs terrified and timid beasts are wont.I raised my head to see who this might be,And never in a furnace was there seenMetals or glass so lucent and so redAs one I saw who said: “If it may please you²¹To mount aloft, here it behoves you turn;This way goes he who goeth after peace.”His aspect had bereft me of my sight,So that I turned me back unto my Teachers,Like one who goeth as his hearing guides him.And as, the harbinger of early dawn,The air of May doth move and breathe out fragrance,Impregnate all with herbage and with flowers,So did I feel a breeze strike in the midstMy front, and felt the moving of the plumesThat breathed around an odor of ambrosia;And heard it said: “Blessed are they whom graceSo much illumines, that the love of tasteExcites not in their breasts too great desire,Hungering at all times so far as is just.”

Continuation of the punishment of Gluttony. ↩
Continuing the words with which the preceding canto closes, and referring to Statius. ↩
Piccarda, sister of Forese and Corso Donati. She was a nun of Santa Clara, and is seen by Dante in the first heaven of Paradise, which Forese calls “high Olympus.” See Paradiso III 49, where her story is told more in detail. ↩
Buonagiunta Urbisani of Lucca is one of the early minor poets of Italy, a contemporary of Dante. Rossetti, Early Italian Poets, 77, gives some specimens of his sonnets and canzoni. All that is known of him is contained in Benvenuto’s brief notice:— “Buonagiunta of Urbisani, an honorable man of the city of Lucca, a brilliant orator in his mother tongue, a facile producer of rhymes, and still more facile consumer of wines; who knew our author in his lifetime, and sometimes corresponded with him.” Tiraboschi also mentions him, Storia della Lett., IV 397:— “He was seen by Dante in Purgatory punished among the Gluttons, from which vice, it is proper to say, poetry did not render him exempt.” ↩
Pope Martin the Fourth, whose fondness for the eels of Bolsena brought his life to a sudden close, and his soul to this circle of Purgatory, has been ridiculed in the well-known epigram— “Gaudent anguillae, quod mortuus hic jacet ille / Qui quasi morte reas excoriabat eas.” “Martin the Fourth,” says Milman, History of Latin Christianity, VI 143, “was born at Mont Pence in Brie; he had been Canon of Tours. He put on at first the show of maintaining the lofty character of the Churchman. He excommunicated the Viterbans for their sacrilegious maltreatment of the Cardinals; Rinaldo Annibaldeschi, the Lord of Viterbo, was compelled to ask pardon on his knees of the Cardinal Rosso, and forgiven only at the intervention of the Pope. Martin the Fourth retired to Orvieto. “But the Frenchman soon began to predominate over the Pontiff; he sunk into the vassal of Charles of Anjou. The great policy of his predecessor, to assuage the feuds of Guelph and Ghibelline, was an Italian policy; it was altogether abandoned. The Ghibellines in every city were menaced or smitten with excommunication; the Lambertazzi were driven from Bologna. Forli was placed under interdict for harboring the exiles; the goods of the citizens were confiscated for the benefit of the Pope. Bertoldo Orsini was deposed from the Countship of Romagna; the office was bestowed on John of Appia, with instructions everywhere to coerce or to chastise the refractory Ghibellines.” Villani, Book VI Ch. 106, says:— “He was a good man, and very favorable to Holy Church and to those of the house of France, because he was from Tours.” He is said to have died of a surfeit. The eels and sturgeon of Bolsena, and the wines of Orvieto and Montefiascone, in the neighborhood of whose vineyards he lived, were too much for him. But he died in Perugia, not in Orvieto. ↩
The Lake of Bolsena is in the Papal States, a few miles northwest of Viterbo, on the road from Rome to Siena. It is thus described in Murray’s Handbook of Central Italy, p. 199:— “Its circular form, and being in the centre of a volcanic district, hashed to its being regarded as an extinct crater; but that hypothesis can scarcely be admitted when the great extent of the lake is considered. The treacherous beauty of the lake conceals malaria in its most fatal forms; and its shores, although there are no traces of a marsh, are deserted, excepting where a few sickly hamlets are scattered on their western slopes. The ground is cultivated in many parts down to the water’s edge, but the laborers dare not sleep for a single night during the summer or autumn on the plains where they work by day; and a large tract of beautiful and productive country is reduced to a perfect solitude by this invisible calamity. Nothing can be more striking than the appearance of the lake, without a single sail upon its waters, and with scarcely a human habitation within sight of Bolsena; and nothing perhaps can give the traveller who visits Italy for the first time a more impressive idea of the effects of malaria.” Of the Vernaccia or Vernage, in which Pope Martin cooked his eels, Henderson says. The History of Ancient and Modern Wines, p. 296:— “The Vernage … was a red wine, of a bright color, and a sweetish and somewhat rough flavor, which was grown in Tuscany and other parts of Italy, and derived its name from the thick-skinned grape, vernaccia (corresponding with the vinaciola of the ancients), that was used in the preparation of it.” Chaucer mentions it in the “Merchant’s Tale”:— “He drinketh ipocras, clarre, and vernage / Of spices hot, to increasen his corage.” And Redi, “Bacchus in Tuscany,” Leigh Hunt’s Tr., p. 30, sings of it thus:— “If anybody doesn’t like Vernaccia, / I mean that sort that’s made in Pietrafitta, / Let him fly / My violent eye; / I curse him, clean, through all the Alpha-beta.” ↩
Ovid, Metamorphoses VII, says of Erisichthon, that he “Deludes his throat with visionary fare, / Feasts on the wind and banquets on the air.” ↩
Ubaldin dalla Pila was a brother of the Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, mentioned Inferno X 120, and father of the Archbishop Ruggieri, Inferno XXXIII 14. According to Sacchetti, Nov. 205, he passed most of his time at his castle, and turned his gardener into a priest; “and Messer Ubaldino,” continues the novelist, “put him into his church; of which one may say he made a pigsty; for he did not put in a priest, but a pig in the way of eating and drinking, who had neither grammar nor any good thing in him.” Some writers say that this Boniface, Archbishop of Ravenna, was a son of Ubaldino; but this is confounding him with Ruggieri, Archbishop of Pisa. He was of the Fieschi of Genoa. His pasturing many people alludes to his keeping a great retinue and court, and the free life they led in matters of the table. ↩
Messer Marchese da Forlì, who answered the accusation made against him, that “he was always drinking,” by saying, that “he was always thirsty.” ↩
A lady of Lucca with whom Dante is supposed to have been enamored. “Let us pass over in silence,” says Balbo, Life and Times of Dante, II 177, “the consolations and errors of the poor exile.” But Buti says:— “He formed an attachment to a gentle lady, called Madonna Gentucca, of the family of Rossimpelo, on account of her great virtue and modesty, and not with any other love.” Benvenuto and the Ottimo interpret the passage differently, making gentucca a common noun—gente bassa, low people. But the passage which immediately follows, in which a maiden is mentioned who should make Lucca pleasant to him, seems to confirm the former interpretation. ↩
In the throat of the speaker, where he felt the hunger and thirst of his punishment. ↩
Chaucer, Complaint of the Blacke Knight, 194:— “But even like as doth a skrivenere, / That can no more tell what that he shal write, / But as his maister beside dothe indite.” ↩
A canzone of the Vita Nuova, beginning, in Rossetti’s version, Early Italian Poets, p. 255:— “Ladies that have intelligence in love, / Of mine own lady I would speak with you; / Not that I hope to count her praises through, / But, telling what I may, to ease my mind.” ↩
Jacopo da Lentino, or “the Notary,” was a Sicilian poet who flourished about 1250, in the later days of the Emperor Frederick the Second. Crescimbeni, L’Istoria Della Volgar Poesia, III 43, says that Dante “esteemed him so highly, that he even mentions him in his Comedy, doing him the favor to put him into Purgatory.” Tassoni, and others after him, make the careless statement that he addressed a sonnet to Petrarca. He died before Petrarca was born. Rossetti gives several specimens of his sonnets and canzonette in his Early Italian Poets, of which the following is one:— “Of his Lady in Heaven. / “I have it in my heart to serve God so / That into Paradise I shall repair— / The holy place through the which everywhere / I have heard say that joy and solace flow. / Without my lady I were loath to go— / She who has the bright face and the bright hair; / Because if she were absent, I being there, / My pleasure would be less than naught, I know. / Look you, I say not this to such intent / As that I there would deal in any sin: / I only would behold her gracious mien, / And beautiful soft eyes, and lovely face, / That so it should be my complete content / To see my lady joyful in her place.” Fra Guittone d’ Arezzo, a contemporary of the Notary, was one of the Frati Gaudenti, or Jovial Friars, mentioned in note 336. He first brought the Italian Sonnet to the perfect form it has since preserved, and left behind the earliest specimens of Italian letter-writing. These letters are written in a very florid style, and are perhaps more poetical than his verses, which certainly fall very far short of the “sweet new style.” Of all his letters the best is that “To the Florentines,” from which a brief extract is given note 615. ↩
Corso Donati, the brother of Forese who is here speaking, and into whose mouth nothing but Ghibelline wrath could have put these words. Corso was the leader of the Neri in Florence, and a partisan of Charles de Valois. His death is recorded by Villani, VIII 96, and is thus described by Napier, Florentine History, I 407:— “The popularity of Corso was now thoroughly undermined, and the priors, after sounding the Campana for a general assembly of the armed citizens, laid a formal accusation before the Podestà Piero Branca d’ Agobbio against him for conspiring to overthrow the liberties of his country, and endeavoring to make himself Tyrant of Florence: he was immediately cited to appear, and, not complying, from a reasonable distrust of his judges, was within one hour, against all legal forms, condemned to lose his head, as a rebel and traitor to the commonwealth. “Not willing to allow the culprit more time for an armed resistance than had been given for legal vindication, the Scignory, preceded by the Gonfalonier of justice, and followed by the Podestà, the captain of the people, and the executor—all attended by their guards and officers—issued from the palace; and with the whole civic force marshalled in companies, with banners flying, moved forward to execute an illegal sentence against a single citizen, who nevertheless stood undaunted on his defence. “Corso, on first hearing of the prosecution, had hastily barricaded all the approaches to his palace, but, disabled by the gout, could only direct the necessary operations from his bed; yet thus helpless, thus abandoned by all but his own immediate friends and vassals; suddenly condemned to death; encompassed by the bitterest foes, with the whole force of the republic banded against him, he never cowered for an instant, but courageously determined to resist, until succored by Uguccione della Faggiola, to whom he had sent for aid. This attack continued during the greater part of the day, and generally with advantage to the Donati, for the people were not unanimous, and many fought unwillingly, so that, if the Rossi, Bardi, and other friends had joined, and Uguccioni’s forces arrived, it would have gone hard with the citizens. The former were intimidated, the latter turned back on hearing how matters stood; and then only did Corso’s adherents lose heart and slink from the barricades, while the townsmen pursued their advantage by breaking down a garden wall opposite the Stinche prisons and taking their enemy in the rear. This completed the disaster, and Corso, seing no chance remaining, fled towards the Casentino; but, being overtaken by some Catalonian troopers in the Florentine service, he was led back a prisoner from Rovezzano. After vainly endeavoring to bribe them, unable to support the indignity of a public execution at the hands of his enemies, he let himself fall from his horse, and, receiving several stabs in the neck and flank from the Catalan lances, his body was left bleeding on the road, until the monks of San Salvi removed it to their convent, where he was interred next morning with the greatest privacy. Thus perished Corso Donati, ‘the wisest and most worthy knight of his time; the best speaker, the most experienced statesman; the most renowned, the boldest, and most enterprising nobleman in Italy: he was handsome in person and of the most gracious manners, but very worldly, and caused infinite disturbance in Florence on account of his ambition.’ … ‘People now began to repose, and his unhappy death was often and variously discussed, according to the feelings of friendship or enmity that moved the speaker; but in truth, his life was dangerous, and his death reprehensible. He was a knight of great mind and name, gentle in manners as in blood; of a fine figure even in his old age, with a beautitul countenance, delicate features, and a fair complexion; pleasing, wise; and an eloquent speaker. His attention was ever fixed on important things; he was intimate with all the great and noble, had an extensive influence, and was famous throughout Italy. He was an enemy of the middle classes and their supporters, beloved by the troops, but full of malicious thoughts, wicked, and artful. He was thus basely murdered by a foreign soldier, and his fellow-citizens well knew the man, for he was instantly conveyed away: those who ordered his death were Rosso della Tosa and Pazzino de’ Pazzi, as is commonly said by all; and some bless him and some the contrary. Many believe that the two said knights killed him, and I, wishing to ascertain the truth, inquired diligently, and found what I have said to be true.’ Such is the character of Corso Donati, which has come down to us from two authors who must have been personally acquainted with this distinguished chief, but opposed to each other in the general politics of their country.” See also note 94. [Villani, VIII Ch. 96.] [Dino Compagni, III 76.] ↩
Virgil and Statius. ↩
Dante had only so far gone round the circle, as to come in sight of the second of these trees, which from distance to distance encircle the mountain. ↩
In the Terrestrial Paradise on the top of the mountain. ↩
The Centaurs, born of Ixion and the Cloud, and having the “double breasts” of man and horse, became drunk with wine at the marriage of Hippodamia and Pirithous, and strove to carry off the bride and the other women by violence. Theseus and the rest of the Lapithae opposed them, and drove them from the feast. This famous battle is described at great length by Ovid, Metamorphoses XII, Dryden’s Tr.:— “For one, most brutal of the brutal brood, / Or whether wine or beauty fired his blood, / Or both at once, beheld with lustful eyes / The bride; at once resolved to make his prize. / Down went the board; and fastening on her hair, / He seized with sudden force the frighted fair. / ’Twas Eurytus began: his bestial kind / His crime pursued; and each, as pleased his mind, / Or her whom chance presented, took: the feast / An image of a taken town expressed. / “The cave resounds with female shrieks; we rise / Mad with revenge, to make a swift reprise: / And Theseus first, ‘What frenzy has possessed, / O Eurytus,’ he cried, ‘thy brutal breast, / To wrong Pirithous, and not him alone, / But, while I live, two friends conjoined in one?’ ” ↩
Judges 7:5, 6:— “So he brought down the people unto the water: and the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men; but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water.” ↩
The Angel of the Seventh Circle. ↩