The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  The Jovial Friars tell Virgil how he may climb from the pit, and Virgil discovers that Malacoda lied to him about the bridges over the Sixth Bolgia.

  Silent, apart, and unattended we went

  as Minor Friars go when they walk abroad,

  one following the other. The incident

  recalled the fable of the Mouse and the Frog

  that Aesop tells. For compared attentively

  point by point, “pig” is no closer to “hog”

  than the one case to the other. And as one thought

  springs from another, so the comparison

  gave birth to a new concern, at which I caught

  my breath in fear. This thought ran through my mind:

  “These Fiends, through us, have been made ridiculous,

  and have suffered insult and injury of a kind

  to make them smart. Unless we take good care—

  now rage is added to their natural spleen—

  they will hunt us down as greyhounds hunt the hare.”

  Already I felt my scalp grow tight with fear.

  I was staring back in terror as I said:

  “Master, unless we find concealment here

  and soon, I dread the rage of the Fiends: already

  they are yelping on our trail: I imagine them

  so vividly I can hear them now.” And he:

  “Were I a pane of leaded glass, I could not

  summon your outward look more instantly

  into myself, than I do your inner thought.

  Your fears were mixed already with my own

  with the same suggestion and the same dark look;

  so that of both I form one resolution:

  the right bank may be sloping: in that case

  we may find some way down to the next pit

  and so escape from the imagined chase.”

  He had not finished answering me thus

  when, not far off, their giant wings outspread,

  I saw the Fiends come charging after us.

  Seizing me instantly in his arms, my Guide—

  like a mother wakened by a midnight noise

  to find a wall of flame at her bedside

  (who takes her child and runs, and more concerned

  for him than for herself, does not pause even

  to throw a wrap about her) raised me, turned,

  and down the rugged bank from the high summit

  flung himself down supine onto the slope

  which walls the upper side of the next pit.

  Water that turns the great wheel of a land-mill

  never ran faster through the end of a sluice

  at the point nearest the paddles—as down that hill

  my Guide and Master bore me on his breast,

  as if I were not a companion, but a son.

  And the soles of his feet had hardly come to rest

  on the bed of the depth below, when on the height

  we had just left, the Fiends beat their great wings.

  But now they gave my Guide no cause for fright;

  for the Providence that gave them the fifth pit

  to govern as the ministers of Its will,

  takes from their souls the power of leaving it.

  About us now in the depth of the pit we found

  a painted people, weary and defeated.

  Slowly, in pain, they paced it round and round.

  All wore great cloaks cut to as ample a size

  as those worn by the Benedictines of Cluny.

  The enormous hoods were drawn over their eyes.

  The outside is all dazzle, golden and fair;

  the inside, lead, so heavy that Frederick’s capes,

  compared to these, would seem as light as air.

  O weary mantle for eternity!

  We turned to the left again along their course,

  listening to their moans of misery,

  but they moved so slowly down that barren strip,

  tired by their burden, that our company

  was changed at every movement of the hip.

  And walking thus, I said: “As we go on,

  may it please you to look about among these people

  for any whose name or history may be known.”

  And one who understood Tuscan cried to us there

  as we hurried past: “I pray you check your speed,

  you who run so fast through the sick air:

  it may be I am one who will fit your case.”

  And at his words my Master turned and said:

  “Wait now, then go with him at his own pace.”

  I waited there, and saw along that track

  two souls who seemed in haste to be with me;

  but the narrow way and their burden held them back.

  When they had reached me down that narrow way

  they stared at me in silence and amazement,

  then turned to one another. I heard one say:

  “This one seems, by the motion of his throat,

  to be alive; and if they are dead, how is it

  they are allowed to shed the leaden coat?”

  And then to me “O Tuscan, come so far

  to the college of the sorry hypocrites,

  do not disdain to tell us who you are.”

  And I: “I was born and raised a Florentine

  on the green and lovely banks of Arno’s waters,

  I go with the body that was always mine.

  But who are you, who sighing as you go

  distill in floods of tears that drown your cheeks?

  What punishment is this that glitters so?”

  “These burnished robes are of thick lead,” said one,

  “and are hung on us like counterweights, so heavy

  that we, their weary fulcrums, creak and groan.

  Jovial Friars and Bolognese were we.

  We were chosen jointly by your Florentines

  to keep the peace, an office usually

  held by a single man; near the Gardingo

  one still may see the sort of peace we kept.

  I was called Catalano, he, Loderingo.”

  I began: “O Friars, your evil . . .”—and then I saw

  a figure crucified upon the ground

  by three great stakes, and I fell still in awe.

  When he saw me there, he began to puff great sighs

  into his beard, convulsing all his body;

  and Friar Catalano, following my eyes,

  said to me: “That one nailed across the road

  counselled the Pharisees that it was fitting

  one man be tortured for the public good.

  Naked he lies fixed there, as you see,

  in the path of all who pass; there he must feel

  the weight of all through all eternity.

  His father-in-law and the others of the Council

  which was a seed of wrath to all the Jews,

  are similarly staked for the same evil.”

  Then I saw Virgil marvel for a while

  over that soul so ignominiously

  stretched on the cross in Hell’s eternal exile.

  Then, turning, he asked the Friar: “If your law permit,

  can you tell us if somewhere along the right

  there is some gap in the stone wall of the pit

  through which we two may climb to the next brink

  without the need of summoning the Black Angels

  and forcing them to raise us from this sink?”

  He: “Nearer than you hope, there is a bridge

  that runs from the great circle of the scarp

  and crosses every ditch from ridge to ridge,

  except that in this it is broken; but with care

  you can mount the ruins which lie along the slope

  and make a heap on the bottom.” My Guide stood there

  motionless for a while with a dark look.

  At last he said: “He lied about this business,

  who spears the sinne
rs yonder with his hook.”

  And the Friar: “Once at Bologna I heard the wise

  discussing the Devil’s sins; among them I heard

  that he is a liar and the father of lies.”

  When the sinner had finished speaking, I saw the face

  of my sweet Master darken a bit with anger:

  he set off at a great stride from that place,

  and I turned from that weighted hypocrite

  to follow in the prints of his dear feet.

  NOTES

  4. the fable of the Mouse and the Frog: The fable was not by Aesop, but was attributed to him in Dante’s time: A mouse comes to a body of water and wonders how to cross. A frog, thinking to drown the mouse, offers to ferry him, but the mouse is afraid he will fall off. The frog thereupon suggests that the mouse tie himself to one of the frog’s feet. In this way they start across, but in the middle the frog dives from under the mouse, who struggles desperately to stay afloat while the frog tries to pull him under. A hawk sees the mouse struggling and swoops down and seizes him; but since the frog is tied to the mouse, it too is carried away, and so both of them are devoured.

  6. point by point: The mouse would be the Navarrese Grafter. The frog would be the two fiends, Grizzly and Hellken. By seeking to harm the Navarrese they came to grief themselves.

  22. a pane of leaded glass: A mirror. Mirrors were backed with lead in Dante’s time.

  43. land-mill: As distinguished from the floating mills common in Dante’s time and up to the advent of the steam engine. These were built on rafts that were anchored in the swift-flowing rivers of Northern Italy.

  44-45. ran faster . . . at the point nearest the paddles: The sharp drop of the sluice makes the water run fastest at the point at which it hits the wheel.

  59. the Benedictines of Cluny: The habit of these monks was especially ample and elegant. St. Bernard once wrote ironically to a nephew who had entered this monastery: “If length of sleeves and amplitude of hood made for holiness, what could hold me back from following [your lead].”

  62. Frederick’s capes: Frederick II executed persons found guilty of treason by fastening them into a sort of leaden shell. The doomed man was then placed in a cauldron over a fire and the lead was melted around him.

  68-9. our company was changed, etc.: Another tremendous Dantean figure. Sense: “They moved so slowly that at every step (movement of the hip) we found ourselves beside new sinners.”

  100. Jovial Friars: A nickname given to the military monks of the order of the Glorious Virgin Mary founded at Bologna in 1261. Their original aim was to serve as peacemakers, enforcers of order, and protectors of the weak, but their observance of their rules became so scandalously lax, and their management of worldly affairs so self-seeking, that the order was disbanded by Papal decree.

  101-2. We were chosen jointly . . . to keep the peace: Catalano dei Malavolti (c. 1210-1285), a Guelph, and Loderingo degli Andolo (c. 1210-1293), a Ghibelline, were both Bolognese and, as brothers of the Jovial Friars, both had served as podestà (the chief officer charged with keeping the peace) of many cities for varying terms. In 1266 they were jointly appointed to the office of podestà of Florence on the theory that a bipartisan administration by men of God would bring peace to the city. Their tenure of office was marked by great violence, however; and they were forced to leave in a matter of months. Modern scholarship has established the fact that they served as instruments of Clement IV’s policy in Florence, working at his orders to overthrow the Ghibellines under the guise of an impartial administration.

  103. Gardingo: The site of the palace of the Ghibelline family degli Uberti. In the riots resulting from the maladministration of the two Jovial Friars, the Ghibellines were forced out of the city and the Uberti palace was razed.

  107 ff. a figure crucified upon the ground: Caiaphas. His words were: “It is expedient that one man shall die for the people and that the whole nation perish not.” (John, xi, 50).

  118. his father-in-law and the others: Annas, father-in-law of Caiaphas, was the first before whom Jesus was led upon his arrest (John, xviii, 13). He had Jesus bound and delivered to Caiaphas.

  121. I saw Virgil marvel: Caiaphas had not been there on Virgil’s first descent into Hell.

  137-38. he lied . . . who spears the sinners yonder: Malacoda.

  143. darken a bit: The original is turbato un poco d’ira. A bit of anger befits the righteous indignation of Human Reason, but immoderate anger would be out of character. One of the sublimities of Dante’s writing is the way in which even the smallest details reinforce the great concepts.

  Canto XXIV

  CIRCLE EIGHT: BOLGIA SEVEN

  The Thieves

  The Poets climb the right bank laboriously, cross the bridge of the SEVENTH BOLGIA and descend the far bank to observe the THIEVES. They find the pit full of monstrous reptiles who curl themselves about the sinners like living coils of rope, binding each sinner’s hands behind his back, and knotting themselves through the loins. Other reptiles dart about the place, and the Poets see one of them fly through the air and pierce the jugular vein of one sinner who immediately bursts into flames until only ashes remain. From the ashes the sinner re-forms painfully.

  These are Dante’s first observations of the Thieves and will be carried further in the next Canto, but the first allegorical retribution is immediately apparent. Thievery is reptilian in its secrecy; therefore it is punished by reptiles. The hands of the thieves are the agents of their crimes; therefore they are bound forever. And as the thief destroys his fellowmen by making their substance disappear, so is he painfully destroyed and made to disappear, not once but over and over again.

  The sinner who has risen from his own ashes reluctantly identifies himself as VANNI FUCCI. He tells his story, and to revenge himself for having been forced to reveal his identity he utters a dark prophecy against Dante.

  In the turning season of the youthful year,

  when the sun is warming his rays beneath Aquarius

  and the days and nights already begin to near

  their perfect balance; the hoar-frost copies then

  the image of his white sister on the ground,

  but the first sun wipes away the work of his pen.

  The peasants who lack fodder then arise

  and look about and see the fields all white,

  and hear their lambs bleat; then they smite their thighs, go back into the house, walk here and there,

  pacing, fretting, wondering what to do,

  then come out doors again, and there, despair

  falls from them when they see how the earth’s face

  has changed in so little time, and they take their staffs

  and drive their lambs to feed—so in that place

  when I saw my Guide and Master’s eyebrows lower,

  my spirits fell and I was sorely vexed;

  and as quickly came the plaster to the sore:

  for when he had reached the ruined bridge, he stood

  and turned on me that sweet and open look

  with which he had greeted me in the dark wood.

  When he had paused and studied carefully

  the heap of stones, he seemed to reach some plan,

  for he turned and opened his arms and lifted me.

  Like one who works and calculates ahead,

  and is always ready for what happens next—

  so, raising me above that dismal bed

  to the top of one great slab of the fallen slate,

  he chose another saying: “Climb here, but first

  test it to see if it will hold your weight.”

  It was no climb for a lead-hung hypocrite:

  for scarcely we—he light and I assisted—

  could crawl handhold by handhold from the pit;

  and were it not that the bank along this side

  was lower than the one down which we had slid,

  I at least—I will not speak for my Guide—

  would have tur
ned back. But as all of the vast rim

  of Malebolge leans toward the lowest well,

  so each succeeding valley and each brim

  is lower than the last. We climbed the face

  and arrived by great exertion to the point

  where the last rock had fallen from its place.