by Dante
Evidence for Marzucco’s fortitude is ascribed to one of two anecdotes by the early commentators: either he astounded Ugolino by his calm demeanor when he, no longer a judge but a Franciscan novice, asked that the corpse of his son be taken up from the public square and buried (to which request the much impressed Ugolino assented) or he exemplified Christian forgiveness in his decision not to seek revenge for the judicial murder of his son. Both anecdotes may, however, be pertinent. In 1286, before these events, Marzucco had ended his long and distinguished career in Pisa as jurist (ca. 1249–86) to become a Franciscan and indeed eventually resided in the Franciscan house at Santa Croce in Florence from 1291 until his death in 1300 or 1301. It is possible that Dante knew him and heard of the events in Pisa and of Ugolino’s involvement in them directly from “lo buon Marzucco” himself. [return to English / Italian]
19–24. The first of these two is Count Orso degli Alberti della Cerbaia, murdered by his cousin, Count Alberto da Mangona, ca. 1286. Their respective fathers, Napoleone and Alessandro degli Alberti da Mangona, have been seen locked in eternal hatred, in Caïna, as treacherous to kindred in Inferno XXXII.40–60. Like father, like cousin.
The only non-Italian in the group, and the first of them to die (in 1278), is the Frenchman, Pierre de la Brosse, “favorite and chamberlain of Philip III of France. On the sudden death in 1276 of the heir to the throne, Louis, Philip’s son by his first wife, Isabella of Aragon, an accusation was brought against the Queen, Mary of Brabant, of having poisoned Louis in order to secure the succession of her own son, among her accusers being Pierre de la Brosse. Not long afterwards Pierre was suddenly arrested and imprisoned by order of the King. After being tried at Paris before an assembly of the nobles, he was hanged by the common hangman, June 30, 1278. The suddenness and ignominy of his execution appear to have caused great wonder and consternation, especially as the charge on which he was condemned was not made known. According to the popular account he had been accused by the Queen of an attempt upon her chastity. The truth seems to be that he was hanged upon a charge of treasonable correspondence with Alphonso X, King of Castile, with whom Philip was at war, the intercepted letters on which the charge was based having, it is alleged, been forged at the instance of the Queen” (T). Dante seems to have believed the common version of the story, which would put Mary of Brabant (in our day a province of Belgium) not in purgatory, where her victim has his victory, but in hell (probably in the last of the Malebolge along with Potiphar’s wife [Inf. XXX.97]) if she failed to repent her evildoing. Since she lived almost as long as Dante would (she died on 12 January 1321), one wonders if she became aware of this warning. [return to English / Italian]
28–33. Dante’s leading question puts Virgil on the spot. In Aeneid VI.376 the Sibyl answers Palinurus’s request of Aeneas that he have his unburied corpse laid to rest by denying him such a hope: “desine fata deum flecti sperare precando” (cease hoping that decrees of the gods may be turned aside by prayer). Does this answer compel us to believe that the penitents are deluded in their hope for the efficacy of prayer? Dante’s question is a necessarily tricky one for Virgil to have to deal with. See Hollander (Holl.1983.1), pp. 113–15. [return to English / Italian]
34–42. Virgil’s response seems casuistic, at least in part. In order not to deny Christians’ belief in the efficacy of prayer, he first of all examines the notion that God’s will has been bent by the desires of others if such prayer be acted upon. If God’s will is won over in an instant by the loving prayer of others, that is as He wills, and there is only an apparent inconsistency. He has merely accepted in immediate payment the “sum” offered on behalf of the guilty party rather than insisting on an extended time of solitary penance. It is a bit difficult to reconcile this formulation, however, with the actual words in the Aeneid, which seem far less accommodating than this explanation of them. When Virgil goes on to explain that, in any case, Palinurus was not praying to the true God in the passage referred to in Book VI, our credulity is still more gravely tested. The statement of the Sibyl is totalizing, while Virgil now reconstructs it to have a meaning that it never could have had, i.e., some prayer is effective, some not. We witness another case in which the pagan author is forced to pay for his error in rather ungainly ways. Here Virgil confidently attacks inadequate Christian readings of the Aeneid as though they were the source of the poem’s theological failure. “Plain is my writing” indeed! [return to English / Italian]
43–48. Virgil, having failed to develop a convincing case for his own expertise, now turns to Beatrice’s authority in this matter. [return to English / Italian]
61–63. This figure will shortly (at verse 74) reveal himself to be Sordello, the thirteenth-century Italian poet, who wrote in Provençal. “Sordello was born (c. 1200) at Goito, village on the Mincio, about 10 miles NW of Mantua; shortly after 1220 he was resident at the court of Count Ricciardo di San Bonifazio of Verona, who had married (c. 1222) Cunizza, daughter of Ezzelino II da Romano (Par. IX.32). In or about 1226, Sordello, with the connivance of her brother, Ezzelino III (Inf. XII.109–110), abducted Cunizza, and took her to Ezzelino’s court. Later he formed a liaison with her, and, to escape her brother’s resentment, was forced to take refuge in Provence, where he made a lengthy stay at the court of Count Raymond Berenger IV (Par. IV.134). There he became acquainted with the Count’s seneschal, Romieu de Villeneuve (Par. VI.128). While in Provence (c. 1240) Sordello wrote one of his most important poems, the lament for Blacatz, one of Count Raymond’s Provençal barons, from which Dante is supposed to have taken the idea of assigning to Sordello the function of pointing out the various princes in Ante-purgatory (Purg. VII.49–136). After Count Raymond’s death (1245) Sordello remained for some years at the court of his son-in-law, Charles of Anjou (Purg. VII.113). When the latter in the spring of 1265 set out on his expedition to Italy to take possession of the kingdom of Sicily, Sordello followed him.… Sordello was among those who shared in the distribution of Apulian fiefs made by Charles to his Provençal barons after his victories over the Hohenstaufen at Benevento and Tagliacozzo, to Sordello and his heirs being assigned several castles in the Abruzzi, under deeds dated March and June, 1269. No further record of Sordello has been preserved, and the date and place of his death are unknown.… Of Sordello’s poems some forty have been preserved, besides the lament for Blacatz already mentioned, is a lengthy didactic poem, the Ensenhamen, or Documentum Honoris” (T).
Beginning perhaps with Torraca (1905), commentators have seen elements of Virgil’s Elysian fields and the guide therein, the poet Musaeus (Aen. VI.666–678), in Dante’s presentation of Sordello. See Hollander (Holl.1993.1), p. 302.
For Sordello’s “scandalous love life” see Bara´nski (Bara.1993.2), pp. 20–23 and notes (for bibliography). [return to English / Italian]
64–65. The intensity of the first four sets of encounters on the mountain has varied: the intense personalness of Manfred was countered by the quizzical distance of Belacqua, which in turn was balanced by the three intense self-narratives of Jacopo, Buonconte, and Pia. Sordello begins with a Belacqua-like reserve, only to be roused to a pitch of excitement by Virgil’s revelation of his Mantuan homeland. [return to English / Italian]
66. Sordello’s pose may recall Genesis 49:9, where Judah, in Jacob’s dying blessing, is described as a couching lion. Tommaseo was the first commentator to make this suggestion. [return to English / Italian]
70. As Scartazzini (1900) pointed out, Sordello is unable to discern that Dante is here in the flesh because the sun is behind the mountain (see vv. 55–57) and he does not cast a shadow. [return to English / Italian]
72. The word “Mantua” may have been intended, according to Benvenuto da Imola (followed by John of Serravalle), as the first word of Virgil’s own Latin epitaph, “Mantua me genuit.…” See notes to Purgatorio III.27 and V.134. [return to English / Italian]
73–75. The civic patriotism of Sordello is awakened when Virgil mentions their common homeland. Their
resulting embrace has been, when coupled with Dante’s failed attempt to embrace Casella (Purg. II.76–81), the source of considerable puzzlement when it is considered along with the decision not to embrace arrived at by Statius and Virgil. See note to Purgatorio XXI.130–136. [return to English / Italian]
76–77. This passage begins what Benvenuto considers the third part of this canto, “a digression against Italy and the principal authors of her desolation.” Dante himself at verse 128 refers to his “digression” here; but no one can possibly imagine that this “digression” is not central to his purpose. (On the subject of Dante’s propensity to digress see Corsi [Cors.1987.1].) The poet will directly address Italy herself, the Church, the uncrowned Habsburg emperor Albert, God, and, finally, Florence.
As has long been noted, the sixth canto of each cantica is devoted to the treatment of political issues, those of Florence (Inf.), of Italy (Purg.), of the empire (Par.)—though these subjects are intertwined. [return to English / Italian]
78. Bernardino Daniello (1568) was apparently the first to notice the now often-cited biblical source for Dante’s phrase “donna di provincie” (princeps provinciarum) in the Lamentations of Jeremiah 1:1: “How does the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!” Jeremiah’s lament for Jerusalem had been a central reference point for the death of Beatrice, recorded in Vita nuova XXVIII.1. [return to English / Italian]
83. The evident recollection of the central image of Ugolino’s punishment (Inf. XXXII.127–132) may owe its deployment here to the earlier concern with the Ugolino-related reference to the “good Marzucco” of Pisa. See note to vv. 16–18. [return to English / Italian]
88–89. The language here clearly derives from Dante’s earlier expression of these sentiments, as Andreoli (1856) was perhaps the first to observe, in Convivio IV.ix.10: “Thus we might say of the Emperor, if we were to describe his office with an image, that he is the one who rides in the saddle of the human will. How this horse pricks across the plain without a rider is more than evident, especially in wretched Italy, which has been left with no means whatsoever to govern herself” (tr. Lansing).
“Justinian, surnamed the Great, Emperor of Constantinople, A.D. 527–565. During his reign the great general Belisarius overthrew the Vandal kingdom in Africa and the Gothic kingdom in Italy. Justinian, who is best known not by his conquests but by his legislation, appointed a commission of jurists to draw up a complete body of law, which resulted in the compilation of two great works; one, called Digesta or Pandectae, in fifty books, contained all that was valuable in the works of preceding jurists; the other, called Justinianeus Codex, consisted of a collection of the Imperial constitutions. To these two works was subsequently added an elementary treatise in four books, under the title Institutiones; and at a later period Justinian published various new constitutions, to which he gave the name of Novellae Constitutiones. These four works, under the general name of Corpus Juris Civilis, form the Roman law as received in Europe” (T).
The empty chariot of the empire is reflected in the similarly empty chariot of the Church in the procession of the Church Militant, beset by all its external and internal enemies, in Purgatorio XXXII. [return to English / Italian]
91–96. The leaders of the Church are accused of having interfered in the civil governance of Italy, trying to guide its affairs by manipulating its “bridle” without having allowed the horse’s rider to seat himself in the saddle. The passage may reflect Dante’s unhappiness either with the intrigues of Pope Boniface VIII, maneuvering to bring about the accession of Albert in 1298, or with those of Pope Clement V, who managed to control the election of the next emperor, Henry VII, after the death of “German Albert” in 1308—or with both pontiffs’ involvements in imperial politics. The language here reflects the biblical text that had greatest currency in the antipapal political arguments of the time, apparently claiming an indisputable right to govern for the monarch, Matthew 22:21: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” [return to English / Italian]
97–102. “German Albert, i.e. Albert I of Austria, son of Rudolf of Hapsburg, Emperor (but never crowned), 1298–1308; he was elected after having slain his predecessor, Adolf of Nassau, in a battle near Worms, his treason against Adolf having been condoned by Boniface VIII in consideration of the advantages of his alliance against the Pope’s mortal enemy, Philip the Fair of France. Dante … foretells his violent death (which took place on May 1, 1308, when he was assassinated at Königstein, close to the castle of Hapsburg, by his nephew John)” (T). It is also possible that Dante had in mind, as punishment of Albert’s “blood,” the death of his firstborn son, Rudolph, in 1307.
The image of Italy as uncontrolled animal, which has been operative since verse 89, now culminates in Sordello-like invective (see Perugi [Peru.1983.1]) against the Habsburg ruler.
Dante’s post-eventum prophecy is clearly written after May 1308, but how much later? The really difficult problem facing anyone who wants to resolve this question involves the identity of Albert’s “successor.” Is the reference simply to any successor who will feel compelled by pressure to act in Italophile ways? Or does Dante have Henry VII of Luxembourg, elected in 1308, in mind? Various commentators (e.g., Tozer, Trucchi, Momigliano) argue for a date of composition between 1308 and July 1310, when Henry finally announced his intention of coming to Italy, the “garden of the empire.” If such was the case, Henry had not yet begun his descent into Italy (autumn of 1310) and the rather cool tone of Dante’s appeal for imperial action would make sense. For after the emperor’s advent, Dante’s words about him are, at least at first (Epistle V, composed in the last quarter of 1310) enormously warm and hopeful. We would then have three stages in Dante’s responses to Henry: (1) initial dubiety (1308–10), (2) great excitement as the campaign to put Italy under the governance of a true Roman emperor begins (1310–11), (3) eventual wary enthusiasm (see the two political letters written in the spring of 1311 [Epistles VI and VII]), given the precariousness of Henry’s military and political situation (1311–13). (For Dante’s political epistles see Pertile [Pert.1997.1]; for this view of Dante’s changing enthusiasms about Henry’s Italian mission see Hollander [Holl.2001.1], pp. 133–36.) [return to English / Italian]
103. Albert’s father is Rudolph of Habsburg—see Purgatorio VII.94. [return to English / Italian]
106–117. The final four tercets of the poet’s apostrophe of Albert all begin with mocking appeals to him to come to Italy (Albert was alive at the imagined date of the poem, 1300) to see “the garden of the empire laid waste.” [return to English / Italian]
106–108. These first four names offer evidence of pandemic civil strife, exemplified by the Montecchi (Ghibellines) and the Guelph Cappelletti (Shakespeare’s Montagues and Capulets), two political factions of the city of Cremona, still bearing the names of their founding families but no longer remaining family units (see Singleton’s note to verse 106).
The Filippeschi, a Ghibelline family of Orvieto, were in continual combat with the Guelph Monaldeschi. The former, encouraged by Henry’s presence in Italy, attempted to vanquish the Monaldeschi but failed and were themselves banished from Orvieto in 1312. [return to English / Italian]
109–111. “Santafiora, county in the Sienese Maremma, which from Cent. IX down to 1300 belonged to the powerful Ghibelline family of the Aldobrandeschi, who thence took their title of Counts of Santafiora. It was formerly an imperial fief, but at the time Dante wrote it was in the hands of the Guelfs of Siena” (T). We meet one of the counts of Santafiora, Omberto Aldobrandesco, in Purgatorio XI.55–72.
The language here reflects the Bible, as commentators since Daniello (1568) have noted, Jesus’s words foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 21:23), “For there shall be great distress (pressura) in the land.” [return to English / Italian]
112–114. Dante’s view of Rome’s desire to have an emperor in the saddle is obviously at odds with the typical Guelph view. [return to English / Italian]
115–117. Albert’s “people” are the Italians, bereft of their true leader; he would be shamed were he to hear what they say of him for abandoning them. [return to English / Italian]
118–123. The name “Jove” occurs variously in the poem, nine times in all, but here alone does it refer only to the Christian God (God is referred to as Jupiter in Inf. XXXI.45 in a similar usage). Although the poet realizes that his questioning of divine justice is out of bounds, he persists in it.
God’s plan for Italy, in any case, arises from his divine counsel, which is beyond our knowing: see Psalm 35:7 [36:6]: “Iudicia tua abyssus multa” (Your judgments like the great deep), a citation first offered by Benvenuto da Imola. [return to English / Italian]
124–126. Lacking an emperor, Italy is governed by local tyrants, while every yokel who joins a political party fancies himself the “new Marcellus.” But which Marcellus? The debate continues. As Singleton points out, there were three contemporaneous Roman consuls named Marcellus and, among these, the most likely to be referred to here is Marcus Claudius Marcellus, consul in 51 B.C., and renowned for his hatred of Julius Caesar. It is possibly he to whom Lucan refers in De bello civili (I.313): “Marcellusque loquax et, nomina vana, Catones” (Marcellus, that man of words, and Cato, that empty name). This identification, which is supported by the majority of commentators (and given a magisterial first exposition by Benvenuto da Imola) and which apparently makes excellent sense in a context that certainly seems to inveigh against hostility to the emperor, is at least problematic: Lucan’s words are part of Julius Caesar’s infamous first speech to his troops, when he counsels their march on Rome (see note to Inf. XXVI.112–113), and they also ridicule Cato the Younger, surely Dante’s greatest classical hero. In fact, the Lucanian Caesar unites Marcellus, Cato, and Pompey as three of his great enemies. Dante probably would have felt that anyone claimed as an enemy by Julius, about to destroy the Roman republic, was his friend. It would be strange for Dante to lend himself to Julius’s view of these men, even if he defends the Caesarean inviolability of the eventual emperor and condemns Brutus and Cassius for murdering him. In any case, it is perhaps wise to consider other alternatives. An early tradition held that the text read “Metellus” (see Purg. IX.138) and not “Marcellus,” but this possibility is no longer seriously considered. One other Marcus Claudius Marcellus, however, is worthy of consideration. He was consul in 222 B.C., successful in skirmishes against the great Hannibal, conqueror of Syracuse, welcomed back to Rome and referred to as “the Sword of Rome,” the best known of all Romans of that name, and indeed mentioned in the Aeneid (VI.855) as one of Rome’s greatest warriors, presented in the parade of heroes described by Anchises as preceding that latter-day Marcellus, the Emperor Augustus’s adopted and very mortal son. Vellutello (1544) and Tommaseo (1837) both think of the earlier Marcus Claudius as the Marcellus most likely to be mentioned here. One potential advantage of this solution is that it broadens the base of Dante’s political scorn: if the Marcellus is Lucan’s, then only Guelph bumpkins, hating the emperor, are indicated; if Virgil’s, then all enthusiastic amateurs, of whatever party, who think of themselves as great men. [return to English / Italian]