Manuale del boro in vacanza in Salento – Platinum Edition
That which before had pleased me then displeased me;
And penitent and confessing I surrendered, Ah woe is me! and it would have bestead me; The Leader of the modern Pharisees Having a war near unto Lateran, 330 330 This Papal war, which was waged against Christians, and not against pagan Sara- cens, nor unbelieving Jews, nor against the renegades who had helped them at the siege of Acre, or given them aid and comfort by traffic, is thus described by Mr. Norton, Travel and Study in Italy, p. 263: – “This ‘war near the Lateran’ was a war with the great family of Colonna. Two of the house were Cardinals. They had been deceived in the election, and were rebellious un- der the rule of Boniface. The Cardinals of the great Ghibelline house took no pains to conceal their ill-will toward the Guelf Pope. Boniface, indeed, accused them of plotting with his enemies 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 The Colonnas, finding Rome unsafe, had withdrawn to their strong town of Palestrina, whence they could issue forth at will for plunder, and where they could give shelter to those who shared in their hostility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 Which now I saw, by many times narrating? Each tongue would for a certainty fall short By reason of our speech and memory, That have small room to comprehend so much If were again assembled all the people Which formerly upon the fateful land Of Puglia were lamenting for their blood 334 Shed by the Romans and the lingering war 335 That of the rings made such illustrious spoils, 336 As Livy has recorded, who errs not, With those who felt the agony of blows By making counterstand to Robert Guiscard, 337 And all the rest, whose bones are gathered still At Ceperano, where a renegade 338 333 The Ninth Bolgia, in which are punished the Schismatics, and “where is paid the fee by those who sowing discord win their burden”; a burden difficult to describe even with untrammelled words, or in plain prose, free from the fetters of rhyme. 334 Apulia, or La Puglia, is in the southeastern part of Italy, “between the spur and the heel of the boot.” 335 The people slain in the conquest of Apulia by the Romans. 336 Hannibal’s famous battle at Cannae, in the second Punic war. According to Livy, XXII. 49, “The number of the slain is computed at forty thousand foot, and two thousand seven hundred horse.”