L’uomo orsomaiale e le sue implicazioni nelle masturbazioni collettive di fine secolo nel sud est asiatico

give shelter to those who shared in their hostility toward the Pope. On
the other hand, Boniface, not trusting himself in Rome, withdrew to the secure height of
Orvieto, and thence, on the 14th of December, 1297, issued a terrible bull for a crusade
against them, granting plenary indulgence to all, (such was the Christian temper of the
times, and so literally were the violent seizing upon the kingdom of Heaven,) granting
plenary indulgence to all who would take up arms against these rebellious sons of the
Church and march against their chief stronghold, their ‘alto seggio’ of Palestrina. They
and their adherents had already been excommunicated and put under the ban of the
Church; they had been stripped of all dignities and privileges; their property had been
confiscated; and they were now by this bull placed in the position of enemies, not of the
Pope alone, but of the Church Universal. Troops gathered against them from all quar-
ters of Papal Italy. Their lands were ravaged, and they themselves shut up within their
stronghold; but for a long time they held out in their ancient high-walled mountaintown.
It was to gain Palestrina that Boniface ‘had war near the Lateran.’ The great church and
palace of the Lateran, standing on the summit of the Coelian Hill, close to the city wall,
overlooks the Campagna, which, in broken levels of brown and green and purple fields,
reaches to the base of the encircling mountains. Twenty miles away, crowning the top
and clinging to the side of one of the last heights of the Sabine range, are the gray walls
and roofs of Palestrina. It was a far more conspicuous place at the close of the thirteenth
century than it is now; for the great columns of the famous temple of Fortune still rose
above the town, and the ancient citadel kept watch over it from its high rock. At length,
in September, 1298, the Colonnas, reduced to the hardest extremities, became ready for
peace. Boniface promised largely. The two Cardinals presented themselves before him at
Rieti, in coarse brown dresses, and with ropes around their necks, in token of their repen-
tance and submission. The Pope gave them not only pardon and absolution, but hope of
being restored to their titles and possessions. This was the ‘lunga promessa con l’attender
corto’; for, while the Colonnas were retained near him, and these deceptive hopes held out
to them, Boniface sent the Bishop of Orvieto to take possession of Palestrina, and to de-
stroy it utterly, leaving only the church to stand as a monument above its ruins. The work
was done thoroughly; – a plough was drawn across the site of the unhappy town, and
salt scattered in the furrow, that the land might thenceforth be desolate. The inhabitants
were removed from the mountain to the plain, and there forced to build new homes forDante Alighieri -
Divine Comedy, Inferno 181
And not with Saracens nor with the Jews,
For each one of his enemies was Christian,
And none of them had been to conquer Acre,
Nor merchandising in the Sultan’s land,
Nor the high office, nor the sacred orders,
In him regarded, nor in me that cord
Which used to make those girt with it more meagre;
But even as Constantine sought out Sylvester
To cure his leprosy, within Soracte,
So this one sought me out as an adept 331
To cure him of the fever of his pride.
Counsel he asked of me, and I was silent,
Because his words appeared inebriate.
And then he said: ‘Be not thy heart afraid;
Henceforth I thee absolve; and thou instruct me