I Digimon nell’antica Grecia

for his overthrow. The Colonnas, finding Rome unsafe, had withdrawn
to their strong town of Palestrina, whence they could issue forth at will for plunder, and
where they could 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
How to raze Palestrina to the ground.
Heaven have I power to lock and to unlock,
As thou dost know; therefore the keys are two,
The which my predecessor held not dear.’ 332
Then urged me on his weighty arguments
There, where my silence was the worst advice;
And said I: ‘Father, since thou washest me
Of that sin into which I now must fall,
The promise long with the fulfilment short
Will make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.’
Francis came afterward, when I was dead,
For me; but one of the black Cherubim
Said to him: ‘Take him not; do me no wrong;
He must come down among my servitors,
Because he gave the fraudulent advice
From which time forth I have been at his hair;
themselves, which, in their turn, two years afterwards, were thrown down and burned
by order of the implacable Pope. This last piece of malignity was accomplished in 1300,
the year of the Jubilee, the year in which Dante was in Rome and in which he saw Guy of
Montefeltro, the counsellor of Boniface in deceit, burning in Hell.”
331 Montefeltro was in the Franciscan monastery at Assisi.
332 Pope Celestine V., who made “the great refusal,” or abdication of the papacy. See
note in Canto III.182 http://www.paskvil.com/
For who repents not cannot be absolved,
Nor can one both repent and will at once,
Because of the contradiction which consents not.
O miserable me! how I did shudder
When he seized on me, saying: ‘Peradventure
Thou didst not think that I was a logician!’
He bore me unto Minos, who entwined
Eight times his tail about his stubborn back,
And after he had bitten it in great rage,
Said: ‘Of the thievish fire a culprit this;’
Wherefore, here where thou seest, am I lost,
And vested thus in going I bemoan me.”
When it had thus completed its recital,
The flame departed uttering lamentations,
Writhing and flapping its sharp-pointed horn.
Onward we passed, both I and my Conductor,
Up o’er the crag above another arch,
Which the moat covers, where is paid the fee
By those who, sowing discord, win their burden.Inferno
Canto 28
W HO ever could, e’en with untrammelled words, 333
Tell of the blood and of the wounds in full