Riviera di Genova. He was Pope only thirty-nine days, and died in 1276. When his kindred came to congratulate him on his election, he said, “Would that ye came to a Cardinal in good health, and not to a dying Pope."

116. Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels, Act I. sc. 1., uses "convert" in the sense of turn:

O which way shall I first convert myself,

Or in what mood shall I essay to speak?

Here it means turned downwards, referring to 1. 72 :—

Stretched prone upon the ground, all downward turned.

133. Parnell, The Hermit.

For this commissioned I forsook the sky;
Nay, cease to kneel! - thy fellow-servant I.

134. Revelation xix. 10: "And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not, I am thy fellow-servant."

137. Matthew xxii. 30: "For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven." He reminds Dante that here all earthly distinctions and relations are laid aside. He is no longer "the Spouse of the Church."

141. Penitence; line 92:

In whom weeping ripens

That without which to God we cannot turn.

142. Madonna Alagia was the wife of Marcello Malaspina, that friend of Dante with whom, during his wanderings, he took refuge in the Lunigiana, in 1307.

CANTO XX.

1. In this canto the subject of the preceding is continued, namely, the punishment of Avarice and Prodigality.

2. To please the speaker, Pope Adrian the Fifth, (who, Canto XIX. 139, says,

Now go, no longer will I have thee linger,)

Dante departs without further question, though not yet satis

13. See the article Cabala at the end of Vol. III.

15. This is generally supposed to refer to Can Grande della Scala. See Inf. I. Note 101.

23. The inn at Bethlehem.

25. The Roman Consul who rejected with disdain the bribes of Pyrrhus, and died so poor that he was buried at the public expense, and the Romans were obliged to give a dowry to his daughters. Virgil, Eneid, VI. 844, calls him "powerful in poverty." Dante also extols him in the Convito, IV. 5.

31. Gower, Conf. Amant., V. 13:

Betwene the two extremites

Of vice stont the propertes
Of vertue, and to prove it so
Take avarice and take also
The vice of prodegalite,
Betwene hem liberalite,

Which is the vertue of largesse

Stant and governeth his noblesse.

32. This is St. Nicholas, patron saint of children, sailors, and travellers. The incident here alluded to is found in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, the great storehouse of medieval wonders.

It may be found also in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, II. 62, and in her version runs thus:

"Now in that city there dwelt a certain nobleman who had three daughters, and, from being rich, he became poor; so poor that there remained no means of obtaining food for his daughters but by sacrificing them to an infamous life; and oftentimes it came into his mind to tell them so, but shame and sorrow held him dumb. Meantime the maidens wept continually, not knowing what to do, and not having bread to eat; and their father became more and more desperate. When Nicholas heard of this, he thought it a shame that such a thing should happen in a Christian land; therefore one night, when the maidens were asleep, and their father alone sat watching and weeping, he took a handful of gold, and, tying it up in a handkerchief, he repaired to the dwelling of the poor man. He considered how he might bestow it without making himself known, and, while he

stood irresolute, the moon coming from behind a cloud showed him a window open; so he threw it in, and it fell at the feet of the father, who, when he found it, returned thanks, and with it he portioned his eldest daughter. A second time Nicholas provided a similar sum, and again he threw it in by night; and with it the nobleman married his second daughter. But he greatly desired to know who it was that came to his aid; therefore he determined to watch, and when the good saint came for the third time, and prepared to throw in the third portion, he was discovered, for the nobleman seized him by the skirt of his robe, and flung himself at his feet, saying, 'O Nicholas ! servant of God! why seek to hide thyself?' and he kissed his feet and his hands. But Nicholas made him promise that he would tell no man. And many other charitable works did Nicholas perform in his native city."

43. If we knew from what old chronicle, or from what Professor of the Rue du Fouarre, Dante derived his knowledge of French history, we might possibly make plain the rather difficult passage which begins with this line. The spirit that speaks is not that of the King Hugh Capet, but that of his father, Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris. He was son of Robert the Strong. Pasquier, Rech. de la France, VI. 1, describes him as both valiant and prudent, and says that, "although he was never king, yet was he a maker and unmaker of kings," and then goes on to draw an elaborate parallel between him and Charles Martel.

The "malignant plant" is Philip the Fair, whose character is thus drawn by Milman, Lat. Christ., Book XI. Ch. 8:

"In Philip the Fair the gallantry of the French temperament broke out on rare occasions; his first Flemish campaigns were conducted with bravery and skill, but Philip ever preferred the subtle negotiation, the slow and wily encroachment; till his enemies were, if not in his power, at least at great disadvantage, he did not venture on the usurpation or invasion. In the slow systematic pursuit of his object he was utterly without scruple, without remorse. He

was not so much cruel as altogether obtuse to human suffering, if necessary to the prosecution of his schemes; not so much rapacious as, finding money indispensable to his aggrandizement, seeking money by means of which he hardly seemed to discern the injustice or the folly. Never was man or monarch so intensely selfish as Philip the Fair: his own power was his ultimate scope; he extended so enormously the royal prerogative, the influence of France, because he was King of France. His rapacity, which persecuted the Templars, his vindictiveness, which warred on Boniface after death as through life, was this selfishness in other forms."

He was defeated at the battle of Courtray, 1302, known in history as the battle of the Spurs of Gold, from the great number found on the field after the battle. This is the vengeance imprecated upon him by Dante.

50. For two centuries and a half, that is, from 1060 to 1316, there was either a Louis or a Philip on the throne of France. The succession was as follows:

Philip I. the Amorous
Louis VI. the Fat
Louis VII. the Young
Philip II. Augustus.
Louis VIII. the Lion
Louis IX. the Saint
Philip III. the Bold

Philip IV. the Fair

52. It is doubtful whether this passage is to be taken literally or figuratively. Pasquier, Rech. de la France, Liv. VI. Ch. 1 (thinking it is the King Hugh Capet that speaks), breaks forth in indignant protest as follows:

"From this you can perceive the fatality there was in this family from its beginning to its end, to the disadvantage of the Carlovingians. And moreover, how ignorant the Italian poet Dante was, when in his book entitled Purgatory he says that our Hugh Capet was the son of a butcher. Which word, once written erroneously and carelessly by him, has so crept into the heads of some simpletons, that

antiquities of our France François de Villon, more

many who never investigated the have fallen into this same heresy. studious of taverns and ale-houses than of good books, says in some part of his works,

Si feusse les hoirs de Capet
Qui fut extrait de boucherie.

And since then Agrippa Alamanni, in his book on the Vanity of Science, chapter Of Nobility, on this first ignorance declares impudently against the genealogy of our Capet. If Dante thought that Hugh the Great, Capet's father, was a butcher, he was not a clever man. But if he used this expression figuratively, as I am willing to believe, those who cling to the shell of the word are greater blockheads still. . . .

...

"This passage of Dante being read and explained by Luigi Alamanni, an Italian, before Francis the First of that name, he was indignant at the imposture, and commanded it to be stricken out. He was even excited to interdict the reading of the book in his kingdom. But for my part, in order to exculpate this author, I wish to say that under the name of Butcher he meant that Capet was son of a great and valiant warrior. . . . If Dante understood it thus, I forgive him; if otherwise, he was a very ignorant poet.”

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...

Benvenuto says that the name of Capet comes from the fact that Hugh, in playing with his companions in boyhood, was in the habit of pulling off their caps and running away with them." Ducange repeats this story from an old chronicle, and gives also another and more probable origin of the name, as coming from the hood or cowl which Hugh was in the habit of wearing.

The belief that the family descended from a butcher was current in Italy in Dante's time. Villani, IV. 3, says: "Most people say that the father was a great and rich burgher of Paris, of a race of butchers or dealers in cattle."

53. When the Carlovingian race were all dead but one And who was he? The Ottimo says it was Rudolph, who became a monk and afterwards Archbishop of Rheims. Benvenuto gives no name, but says only a monk in poor, coarse

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