Inferno
Canto XIX
The third chasm contains the Simonists, who are each fixed head downwards in holes in the rock. Dante speaks with Pope Nicholas III, who takes him at first to be the still living Boniface VIII (Pope from 1294 to 1303). Dante hated Boniface and has here contrived an opportunity—not the only one in the poem, see also Canto XXVII—for speaking his mind. Nicholas tells how he promoted the interests of his family, the Orsini (“I was a son of the She-Bear’), and prophesies the advent in Hell of a Pope “from the West,” i.e. France—Clement V, the Frenchman who transferred the Papal See to Avignon. Dante denounces Simonism to Nicholas in trenchant words. Virgil then carries him to the arch looking down on the next chasm.
O SIMON MAGUS, O lost wretches, led
By thee, who prostitute the things that need,
Being things of God, with goodness to be wed;
Who gape for gold and silver, mouths of greed![i]4. The sin punished in the third chasm is simony, the use of ecclesiastical office for private gain. It derives its name from the Simon Magus of Acts 8:9-24.
For you now must the trumpet blow the doom,
For in the third chasm is your place decreed.
To the next hollow we had already come
And, mounted on the bridge, were in that part
Which hangs plumb over the middle of the tomb.
Wisdom supreme! how dost thou show thine art [10]
In heaven, in earth, and in the pit profound!
How justly dost apportion sin’s desert!
The livid stone upon the bottom I found
Was full of holes, and also on each side,[ii]14. The burrows of the simonists are compared to the pits for baptisers in the Baptistry of Florence, which Dante lovingly calls “his beautiful St. John.” Dante takes this occasion to declare that he once broke down one of these receptacles to save someone drowning inside.
All of one breadth, and each of them was round.
They seemed to me not greater and not less wide
Than those made in my beautiful St. John
Wherein stand the baptisers to preside,
One of which I, not many years agone,
Broke, to save one who else had drowned therein. [20]
I stamp this true, to enlighten every one.
A sinner’s feet from each mouth could be seen
Protruding up, and legs that rose in sight
Far as the calf: the rest remained within.
The soles of either foot were all alight,
Wherefore the joints were quivering in such throes
As had burst withy or grassy bonds outright.
As on things oiled the flame flickers and flows
Moving only along their outer face,
So was it there from the heels unto the toes. [30]
“Who is this, Master, who most in all this place
Writhes himself, quivering as he anguishes,
And whom the licking flames more redly chase?”
And he to me: “If down the bank it please
That I should bear thee, that which lies the lowest,
Thou'lt learn of him and of his trespasses.”
And I: “It pleaseth me where’er thou goest.
Thou art my lord; thou knowest I will to do
Only thy will; and the unsaid words thou knowest.”
On the fourth causeway then we came, and so [40]
Turned and descended down by the left bank
And reached the narrow, pitted floor below.
Nor did the master set me from his flank
Until he had brought me to the hollow crack
Where he was, who lamented with his shank.
“Whoe’er thou be who art planted like a stake
With the head downward, O thou spirit undone,”
I was now saying, “If thou art able, speak!”
I stood still like the friar confessing one
Fixt in the earth for treacherous homicide [50][iii]50. “Fixt in the earth . . .”: murderers were planted, head downwards, in a hole, and buried alive.
Who calls him back, his death so to postpone;
And “Dost thou stand already there,” he cried,
“Boniface, dost thou stand already there?[iv]53. The speaker, Nicholas III, thinks that his successor in simony, Boniface VIII, has arrived. But, as Boniface was not to die until 1303, the book of destiny seems to have lied.
By several years the Writ to me hath lied.
Art thou so quickly gorged with all the gear
For which thou didst not shrink by guile to seize
The beauteous Lady and then to havock her?”[v]57. “The beauteous Lady” is the Church, the Bride of Christ.
I became like to those who, ill at ease,
Not comprehending the answer to them made,
Stand as if mocked, and words within them freeze. [60]
“Make haste and say to him,” then Virgil said,
“I am not he thou thinkest, I am not he.”
And I replied to him as my master bade.
Whereat in every fibre from the knee
The spirit shuddered, sighing in lament,
And spoke: “What is it, then, thou wouldst ask of me?
If to learn who I am thou art so intent
That for this cause thou hast crost the embankment, know
That I in the Great Mantle apparelled went,
And of the She-Bear was true son, and so [70][vi]70-71. Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, Pope Nicholas III from 1277 to 1280, was notorious for his nepotism. Because of the fact that the “She-Bear” was the cognisance in his family arms, Dante refers to his relatives as “the cubs.”
Persistent to advance the cubs, that I,
Who pouched above, myself am pouched below.
Beneath my head are those who in simony
Preceded me, thrust even deeper down
In the stone’s crannies they are pinioned by.
Thither I also, when arrives that one[vii]76-87. “That one” is Boniface. Nicholas has been there nearly twenty years; Boniface’s feet will burn only about eleven years, from 1303 to 1314, when Clement V will die—Clement V, the “shepherd without law,” was noted for his greed and licentiousness, and became the unscrupulous tool of Philip the Fair of France. In 1309 he transferred the Papal See to Avignon. Clement is compared to the Jason of 2 Macc., who bought the high priesthood of King Antiochus. As Antiochus favoured Jason, Philip will have Clement made Pope.
For whom I took thee when I was moved to make
But now the sudden question, shall be thrown.
But longer already is the time I bake
My soles and stay with legs above the chest [80]
Than, planted with red feet, he too shall quake.
For after him shall come out of the West
A shepherd without law, of uglier deed,
Above us both fit covering to be prest.
‘Twill be another Jason, of whom we read
In Maccabees; and as to him of old
His king was soft, so France, by this one fee’d.”
I know not if at this I was too bold,
For in this strain his discourse I repaid.
“Ah, tell me truth now, tell me how much gold [90]
Our Lord of Peter requisition made
Before he put the keys into his hand.
‘Follow me!’ Surely nought but this he bade.
Nor Peter, no, nor the others did demand
Gold from Mathias when he for that part[viii]95. “Mathias” was chosen apostle to fill the place of Judas.
Was chosen, from which the guilty soul was banned.
Stay thou then here; justly chastised thou art,
And keep thou well the monies gotten ill
Which gave thee against Charles so bold a heart.[ix]99. From the beginning of his papacy, Nicholas was hostile to Charles of Anjou.
And were it not that reverence rules me still [100]
For the supreme keys which when life was glad
Thou heldest, and the office thou didst fill,
I’d have for thee words harder than I had;
Such woe your avarice for the world doth spell,
Trampling the good and raising up the bad.
Such pastors did the Evangelist foretell
When a-whoring with the kings before his sight
She who sitteth upon the waters fell;[x]108. “She who sitteth . . .” See Rev. 17: “I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.” Dante combines the woman with the beast, and makes her the symbol of the corrupt Church.
She who was born with seven heads of might,
And ten horns for her sign of warrant bore, [110]
While still her spouse in virtue found delight.
A God of silver and gold ye have made to adore;
And how do ye differ from the idolater
Save that he worships one, and ye five-score?
Ah, Constantine, what evil fruit did bear[xi]115. The Emperor Constantine was thought to have donated the Western Empire to St. Sylvester, the first Pope to hold temporal possessions,
Not thy conversion, but that dowry broad
Thou on the first rich Father didst confer!”
And whether rage or conscience in him gnawed,
The while to him in such a strain I sung,
With both his feet fiercely he kicked abroad. [120]
Of a truth I think it pleased my Guide, he hung
Upon my lips with so content an eye,
Hearing the sound of truth upon my tongue.
Therefore he took me in both his arms to lie,
‘And when he had drawn me all upon his breast
Mounted the path he had descended by.
Nor did he weary in holding me close-prest
Until, where the steep arch the chasm bestrode
From fourth to fifth ridge, he had climbed its crest.
Here softly he the burden of his load [130]
Soft on the rough and craggy cliff deposed
Where to goats even it were a painful road.
Therefrom another valley was disclosed.