Notes
1 Simon Magus attempted to buy the miraculous
power of the apostles (Acts 8:9-24) and is invoked here as the father of the simoniacs of
the third bolgia.
18 This is the baptismal font where Dante
himself was baptized. Dante is relating an incident when he saved a child who had fallen
into the font.
53 Boniface VIII (d. 1303) is destined for
this spot in hell because of his misuse of the papacy and "the lovely lady," the
church (l. 57). The speaker is Nicholas III, himself pope from 1277 to 1280, who as a
member of the Orsini ("she-bear," l. 70) family handed out benefices to his
relatives.
82 Nicholas predicts that a pope after
Boniface, Clement V (d. 1314) shall meet the same end, comparing him to the Jason
(l. 85)
who bribed Antiochus of Syria to appoint him high priest. Clement moved the papal see from
Rome to Avignon.
94 Matthias replaced Judas Iscariot as the
twelfth apostle (Acts 1:23-26).
98 Nicholas plotted against Charles
d’Anjou, king of Naples and Sicily.
106 John the Evangelist describes the woman
upon the waters in Revelation 17. Dante interprets her as the corrupted Roman Church: the
seven heads are the sacraments and the ten horns the commandments.
115 Constantine, emperor of Rome (306-337),
supposedly transferred to Pope Sylvester the political rule of Rome when he moved his own
capital to Constantinople in 330. The "Donation of Constantine," the document
that legalized the transfer, was proven to be a forgery in the fifteenth century. |
|
- O
Simon Magus! O miserable lot
- Who
take the things of God that ought to be
-
Wedded to goodness and in your greediness
-
-
Adulterate them into gold and silver!
- 5
Now the trumpet blast must sound for you
- Since
you are stashed here into the third pocket.
-
- We
had arrived at the next graveyard
- By
climbing to that section of the ridgetop
- Which
juts right over the middle of the ditch.
-
- 10
O highest Wisdom, how great is the art
- You
show in heaven, earth, and this bad world!
- And
how just is the power of your judgment!
-
- I saw
along the sides and on the bottom
- The
livid rockface all pocked full of holes,
- 15
Each one alike in size and rounded shape.
-
- No
smaller or no larger they seemed to me
- Than
are those booths for the baptismal fonts
- Built
in my beautiful San Giovanni —
-
- And
one of those, not many years ago,
- 20
I broke up to save someone drowning in it:
- And
let my word here disabuse men’s minds —
-
- Up
from the mouth of each hole there stuck out
- A
sinner’s feet and legs up to the calf,
- The
rest of him remained stuffed down inside.
-
- 25
The soles of both feet blazed all on fire;
- The
leg-joints wriggled uncontrollably:
- They
would have snapped any rope or tether.
-
- Just
as a flame on anything that’s oily
-
Spreads only on the object’s outer surface,
- 30
So did this fire move from heel to toe.
-
-
"Who is that sinner, master, who suffers so,
-
Writhing more than any of his comrades,"
- I
asked, "the one the redder flame licks dry?"
-
- And
he: "If you want to be lifted down
- 35
Onto that sloping lower bank, then from him
-
You’ll learn about himself and his wrongdoings."
-
- And
I: "My pleasure is what pleases you.
- You
are my lord, and you know I won’t swerve
- From
your will: You know what is left unspoken."
-
- 40
Coming to the fourth causeway, we then turned
- And,
bearing to the left, still descended
- Down
to the strait and perforated bottom.
-
- And
my kind master did not put me down
- From
his side till he’d brought me to the hole
- 45
Of the sinner who shed tears with his shanks.
-
-
"O whatever you are, sorrowful soul,
-
Planted like a stake with your top downward,"
- I
started out, "say something, if you can."
-
- I
stood there like a friar hearing confession
- 50
From a foul assassin who, once fixed in place,
- To
delay execution calls him back again.
-
- And
he cried, "Are you already standing there,
- Are
you already standing there, Boniface?
- By
several years the record lied to me!
-
- 55
"Are you so quickly glutted with the wealth
- Which
did not make you fear to take by guile
- The
lovely lady and then lay her waste?"
-
- I
acted like a person who’s left standing —
- Not
comprehending what’s been said to him —
- 60
Half-mocked and at a loss to make an answer.
-
- Then
Virgil spoke up, "Tell him right away,
-
‘I am not he, I’m not the one you think!’ "
- And I
replied as I had been instructed.
-
- At
this the spirit twisted both feet wildly;
- 65
Then, sighing deeply, with a voice in tears,
- He
asked, "What, then, do you demand of me?
-
-
"If to know who I am has so compelled you
- That
you continued down this bank, then know
- Once
I was vested in the papal mantle,
-
- 70
"And truly I was a son of the she-bear,
- So
avid to advance my cubs that up there
- I
pocketed the money and here, myself.
-
-
"Under my head have been dragged the others
- Who
went, by way of simony, before me,
- 75
Squashed flat in the fissures of the stone.
-
-
"I shall plunge down there, in my turn, when
- The
one I took you for — while thrusting at you
- That
question so abruptly — will arrive here.
-
-
"But a longer time now have I baked my feet
- 80
And stood like this upside-down than he
- Will
stay planted with his red-hot feet up!
-
-
"For after him will come one fouler in deeds,
- A
lawless shepherd from the westward land,
- One
fit to cover up both him and me.
-
- 85
"He’ll be a new Jason, like him we read of
- In
Maccabees; just as Jason’s king was kind,
- So
shall the king of France be kind to him."
-
- I do
not know if now I grew too brash,
- But I
replied to him in the same measure,
- 90
"Well, then, tell me: how costly was the treasure
-
-
"That our Lord demanded of Saint Peter
-
Before he gave the keys into his keeping?
-
Surely he said only ‘Follow me.’
-
-
"Nor did Peter or the rest take gold
- 95
Or silver from Matthias when they chose him
- By
lot to take the place the traitor lost.
-
-
"Stay put, therefore, since you are justly punished,
- And
guard with care the ill-acquired money
- That
made you so high-handed against Charles.
-
- 100
"And were it not that I as yet feel bound
- By my
deep reverence for the mighty keys
- Which
you once held in the lighthearted life,
-
-
"I would here utter words still far more bitter,
-
Because your avarice afflicts the world,
- 105
Trampling good men and vaulting evildoers.
-
-
"You are the shepherds the evangelist meant
- When
he saw ‘she who sits upon the waters’
-
Fornicating with the kings of earth.
-
-
"She is the one born with the seven heads
- 110
Who from her ten horns begot all her strength
- So
long as virtue was her bridegroom’s pleasure.
-
-
"A god of gold and silver you have fashioned!
- How
do you differ from idolators
-
Except they worship one god — you a hundred?
-
- 115
"Ah, Constantine, how much foul harm was fostered,
- Not
by your conversion but by the dowry
- Which
the first wealthy father took from you?"
-
- And
while I chanted him these notes — whether
-
Bitten by his anger or his conscience —
- 120 He
gave a vicious kick with his two feet.
-
- I
honestly believe my guide was pleased,
- So
contented was his look while he kept listening
- To
the sound of these true-spoken words.
-
- At
that he took me within both his arms
- 125
And, when he held me wholly to his breast,
-
Climbed up the path that he had once come down.
-
- Nor
did he weary of clasping me to himself,
- But
carried me to the crest of the arch
- That
crosses from the fourth to the fifth causeway.
-
- 130
Here he gently set down his heavy load,
-
Gently because of the steep and craggy ridge
- Which
even goats would have found hard to pass.
-
- From
there another valley opened before me.
|
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to Inferno XVIII