Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte
dicer del sangue e de le piaghe a pieno
ch'i' ora vidi, per narrar più volte?
Ogne lingua per certo verria meno
per lo nostro sermone e per la mente
c'hanno a tanto comprender poco seno.
S'el s'aunasse ancor tutta la gente
che già, in su la fortunata terra
di Puglia, fu del suo sangue dolente
per li Troiani e per la lunga guerra
che de l'anella fé sì alte spoglie,
come Livïo scrive, che non erra,
con quella che sentio di colpi doglie
per contastare a Ruberto Guiscardo;
e l'altra il cui ossame ancor s'accoglie
a Ceperan, là dove fu bugiardo
ciascun Pugliese, e là da Tagliacozzo,
dove sanz' arme vinse il vecchio Alardo;
e qual forato suo membro e qual mozzo
mostrasse, d'aequar sarebbe nulla
il modo de la nona bolgia sozzo.
Già veggia, per mezzul perdere o lulla,
com' io vidi un, così non si pertugia,
rotto dal mento infin dove si trulla.
Tra le gambe pendevan le minugia;
la corata pareva e 'l tristo sacco
che merda fa di quel che si trangugia.
Mentre che tutto in lui veder m'attacco,
guardommi e con le man s'aperse il petto,
dicendo: “Or vedi com' io mi dilacco!
vedi come storpiato è Mäometto!
Dinanzi a me sen va piangendo Alì,
fesso nel volto dal mento al ciuffetto.
E tutti li altri che tu vedi qui,
seminator di scandalo e di scisma
fuor vivi, e però son fessi così.
Un diavolo è qua dietro che n'accisma
sì crudelmente, al taglio de la spada
rimettendo ciascun di questa risma,
quand' avem volta la dolente strada;
però che le ferite son richiuse
prima ch'altri dinanzi li rivada.
Ma tu chi se' che 'n su lo scoglio muse,
forse per indugiar d'ire a la pena
ch'è giudicata in su le tue accuse?”
“Né morte 'l giunse ancor, né colpa 'l mena,”
rispuose 'l mio maestro, “a tormentarlo;
ma per dar lui esperïenza piena,
a me, che morto son, convien menarlo
per lo 'nferno qua giù di giro in giro;
e quest' è ver così com' io ti parlo.”
Più fuor di cento che, quando l'udiro,
s'arrestaron nel fosso a riguardarmi
per maraviglia, oblïando il martiro.
“Or dì a fra Dolcin dunque che s'armi,
tu che forse vedra' il sole in breve,
s'ello non vuol qui tosto seguitarmi,
sì di vivanda, che stretta di neve
non rechi la vittoria al Noarese,
ch'altrimenti acquistar non saria leve.”
Poi che l'un piè per girsene sospese,
Mäometto mi disse esta parola;
indi a partirsi in terra lo distese.
Un altro, che forata avea la gola
e tronco 'l naso infin sotto le ciglia,
e non avea mai ch'una orecchia sola,
ristato a riguardar per maraviglia
con li altri, innanzi a li altri aprì la canna,
ch'era di fuor d'ogne parte vermiglia,
e disse: “O tu cui colpa non condanna
e cu' io vidi in su terra latina,
se troppa simiglianza non m'inganna,
rimembriti di Pier da Medicina,
se mai torni a veder lo dolce piano
che da Vercelli a Marcabò dichina.
E fa sapere a' due miglior da Fano,
a messer Guido e anco ad Angiolello,
che, se l'antiveder qui non è vano,
gittati saran fuor di lor vasello
e mazzerati presso a la Cattolica
per tradimento d'un tiranno fello.
Tra l'isola di Cipri e di Maiolica
non vide mai sì gran fallo Nettuno,
non da pirate, non da gente argolica.
Quel traditor che vede pur con l'uno,
e tien la terra che tale qui meco
vorrebbe di vedere esser digiuno,
farà venirli a parlamento seco;
poi farà sì, ch'al vento di Focara
non sarà lor mestier voto né preco.”
E io a lui: “Dimostrami e dichiara,
se vuo' ch'i' porti sù di te novella,
chi è colui da la veduta amara.”
Allor puose la mano a la mascella
d'un suo compagno e la bocca li aperse,
gridando: “Questi è desso, e non favella.
Questi, scacciato, il dubitar sommerse
in Cesare, affermando che 'l fornito
sempre con danno l'attender sofferse.”
Oh quanto mi pareva sbigottito
con la lingua tagliata ne la strozza
Curïo, ch'a dir fu così ardito!
E un ch'avea l'una e l'altra man mozza,
levando i moncherin per l'aura fosca,
sì che 'l sangue facea la faccia sozza,
gridò: “Ricordera'ti anche del Mosca,
che disse, lasso! 'Capo ha cosa fatta,'
che fu mal seme per la gente tosca.”
E io li aggiunsi: “E morte di tua schiatta”;
per ch'elli, accumulando duol con duolo,
sen gio come persona trista e matta.
Ma io rimasi a riguardar lo stuolo,
e vidi cosa ch'io avrei paura,
sanza più prova, di contarla solo;
se non che coscïenza m'assicura,
la buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia
sotto l'asbergo del sentirsi pura.
Io vidi certo, e ancor par ch'io 'l veggia,
un busto sanza capo andar sì come
andavan li altri de la trista greggia;
e 'l capo tronco tenea per le chiome,
pesol con mano a guisa di lanterna:
e quel mirava noi e dicea: “Oh me!”
Di sé facea a sé stesso lucerna,
ed eran due in uno e uno in due;
com' esser può, quei sa che sì governa.
Quando diritto al piè del ponte fue,
levò 'l braccio alto con tutta la testa
per appressarne le parole sue
che fuoro: “Or vedi la pena molesta,
tu che, spirando, vai veggendo i morti:
vedi s'alcuna è grande come questa.
E perché tu di me novella porti,
sappi ch'i' son Bertram dal Bornio, quelli
che diedi al re giovane i ma' conforti.
Io feci il padre e 'l figlio in sé ribelli;
Achitofèl non fé più d'Absalone
e di Davìd coi malvagi punzelli.
Perch' io parti' così giunte persone,
partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!,
dal suo principio ch'è in questo troncone.
Così s'osserva in me lo contrapasso.”
Who ever could, e'en with untrammelled words,
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
Shed by the Romans and the lingering war
That of the rings made such illustrious spoils,
As Livy has recorded, who errs not,
With those who felt the agony of blows
By making counterstand to Robert Guiscard,
And all the rest, whose bones are gathered still
At Ceperano, where a renegade
Was each Apulian, and at Tagliacozzo,
Where without arms the old Alardo conquered,
And one his limb transpierced, and one lopped off,
Should show, it would be nothing to compare
With the disgusting mode of the ninth Bolgia.
A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
Was never shattered so, as I saw one
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.
Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
That maketh excrement of what is eaten.
While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
He looked at me, and opened with his hands
His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me;
How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
In front of me doth Ali weeping go,
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;
And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
Disseminators of scandal and of schism
While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.
A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us
Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge
Putting again each one of all this ream,
When we have gone around the doleful road;
By reason that our wounds are closed again
Ere any one in front of him repass.
But who art thou, that musest on the crag,
Perchance to postpone going to the pain
That is adjudged upon thine accusations?"
"Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him,"
My Master made reply, "to be tormented;
But to procure him full experience,
Me, who am dead, behoves it to conduct him
Down here through Hell, from circle unto circle;
And this is true as that I speak to thee."
More than a hundred were there when they heard him,
Who in the moat stood still to look at me,
Through wonderment oblivious of their torture.
"Now say to Fra Dolcino, then, to arm him,
Thou, who perhaps wilt shortly see the sun,
If soon he wish not here to follow me,
So with provisions, that no stress of snow
May give the victory to the Novarese,
Which otherwise to gain would not be easy."
After one foot to go away he lifted,
This word did Mahomet say unto me,
Then to depart upon the ground he stretched it.
Another one, who had his throat pierced through,
And nose cut off close underneath the brows,
And had no longer but a single ear,
Staying to look in wonder with the others,
Before the others did his gullet open,
Which outwardly was red in every part,
And said: "O thou, whom guilt doth not condemn,
And whom I once saw up in Latian land,
Unless too great similitude deceive me,
Call to remembrance Pier da Medicina,
If e'er thou see again the lovely plain
That from Vercelli slopes to Marcabo,
And make it known to the best two of Fano,
To Messer Guido and Angiolello likewise,
That if foreseeing here be not in vain,
Cast over from their vessel shall they be,
And drowned near unto the Cattolica,
By the betrayal of a tyrant fell.
Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca
Neptune ne'er yet beheld so great a crime,
Neither of pirates nor Argolic people.
That traitor, who sees only with one eye,
And holds the land, which some one here with me
Would fain be fasting from the vision of,
Will make them come unto a parley with him;
Then will do so, that to Focara's wind
They will not stand in need of vow or prayer."
And I to him: "Show to me and declare,
If thou wouldst have me bear up news of thee,
Who is this person of the bitter vision."
Then did he lay his hand upon the jaw
Of one of his companions, and his mouth
Oped, crying: "This is he, and he speaks not.
This one, being banished, every doubt submerged
In Caesar by affirming the forearmed
Always with detriment allowed delay."
O how bewildered unto me appeared,
With tongue asunder in his windpipe slit,
Curio, who in speaking was so bold!
And one, who both his hands dissevered had,
The stumps uplifting through the murky air,
So that the blood made horrible his face,
Cried out: "Thou shalt remember Mosca also,
Who said, alas! 'A thing done has an end!'
Which was an ill seed for the Tuscan people."
"And death unto thy race," thereto I added;
Whence he, accumulating woe on woe,
Departed, like a person sad and crazed.
But I remained to look upon the crowd;
And saw a thing which I should be afraid,
Without some further proof, even to recount,
If it were not that conscience reassures me,
That good companion which emboldens man
Beneath the hauberk of its feeling pure.
I truly saw, and still I seem to see it,
A trunk without a head walk in like manner
As walked the others of the mournful herd.
And by the hair it held the head dissevered,
Hung from the hand in fashion of a lantern,
And that upon us gazed and said: "O me!"
It of itself made to itself a lamp,
And they were two in one, and one in two;
How that can be, He knows who so ordains it.
When it was come close to the bridge's foot,
It lifted high its arm with all the head,
To bring more closely unto us its words,
Which were: "Behold now the sore penalty,
Thou, who dost breathing go the dead beholding;
Behold if any be as great as this.
And so that thou may carry news of me,
Know that Bertram de Born am I, the same
Who gave to the Young King the evil comfort.
I made the father and the son rebellious;
Achitophel not more with Absalom
And David did with his accursed goadings.
Because I parted persons so united,
Parted do I now bear my brain, alas!
From its beginning, which is in this trunk.
Thus is observed in me the counterpoise."
For Dante's disclaimer of the ability to describe the blood and wounds that surpass both words and memory (even were he to revert to prose to do so) see Virgil's similar disclaimer in (Aen. VI.625-627): 'And if I had a hundred tongues and as many mouths, along with a voice of iron, I could not put together all the shapes of crime nor run through all the catalogue of torments.' The passage was first cited by Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to XXVIII.1-3) and is now a commonplace in the commentaries. It is remembered probably even more evidently at Paradiso XXIII.55-59, as was perhaps first noted by Tommaseo (comm. to Par. XXIII.55-57).
This elliptical version of a simile, so rich in its catalogue of the horrors of war, involves four battles (or series of battles), two of them ancient, two modern, roughly as follows:
500 BC ca. Aeneas's Trojans triumph in south and central Italy;
216 BC Romans are defeated by the Carthaginians at Cannae;
1170 ca. Robert Guiscard's Normans defeat the Saracens;
1266 & 1268 Manfred and then Conradin are defeated by Charles of Anjou.
In this series of military actions the Roman and/or imperial side first wins, then loses disastrously. The intrinsic view of history here is more chaotic than directed. Absent is Dante's more optimistic view of history unfolding as a Roman and Christian manifestation of the spirit moving through history to its appointed goal (if this sounds like Hegel, it is meant to). And we might further reflect that winning and losing battles has little to do with one's final destination in God's plan: Aeneas wins, but is in Limbo (Inf. IV.122), Robert Guiscard wins and is in heaven (Par. XVIII.48), Manfred loses and is on his way to heaven (Purg. III.112).
For Dante's relation to martial epic, a genre surely drawn to our attention by these scenes of war, see Hollander (“Dante and the Martial Epic,” Mediaevalia 12 [1989]), pp. 62-91 (tr. ital. “Dante e l'epopea marziale,” Letture classensi 18 [1989], pp. 93-113). And for the related question of Dante's relationship to Guittone d'Arezzo as 'epic poet' (as well as rival in love lyric), see the essays by Gorni, Antonelli, and Mazzoni in Guittone d'Arezzo nel settimo centenario della morte: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Arezzo (22-24 aprile 1994), ed. M. Picone (Florence: Franco Cesati, 1995), pp. 307-83; see also Teodolinda Barolini (“Guittone's Ora parrà, Dante's Doglia mi reca, and the Commedia's Anatomy of Desire,” in Seminario Dantesco Internazionale: Atti del primo convegno tenutosi al Chauncey Conference Center, Princeton, 21-23 ottobre 1994, ed. Z. G. Baranski [Florence: Le Lettere, 1997], pp. 3-23). In De vulgari eloquentia (II.ii.7-8) Dante had listed only Bertran de Born (see the note to Inf. XXVIII.130-138) as a poet of salus, or 'arms,' that is, a writer of 'epic.' Since his presence is so amply felt in this canto, starting with these lines, a redoing of the opening of Bertran's canzone 'Si tuit li dol,' as a number of twentieth-century commentators have observed, we may surmise that Dante here, possibly for the first time, thinks of the epic resonance of his own poem. And while he seems to present martial epic as essentially the expression of the brutality of war, in the mode of Bertran, the fact that his poem here involves itself in the matter of martial epic may have made him feel that he himself had some title as a practitioner in this mode, where in De vulgari he was himself obviously not at all interested in it (there he presented himself as a 'poet of rectitude,' not of 'arms'). Mario Fubini (“Inferno: canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera, dir. Mario Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1962)], pp. 999-1021) refers to this as the 'canto delle armi' in which Dante becomes 'il Bertram italiano' (p. 1005). A countering view is presented by Mazzotta (Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993], pp. 75-95), who sees this canto as Dante's 'farewell to arms.' Once could argue that, since Dante had never done poetry of a martial kind before, this is more like his 'hello.' Many years ago the director Sam Peckinpaugh was asked in an interview on television why there was so much insistent, close-up, slow-motion depiction of violence in his film The Wild Bunch. He replied that by so presenting it he had hoped to repel his audience, instilling in them a great dislike of such anti-social activity. Bill Russell, the Boston Celtics star center at the time, his interlocutor, was convincingly dubious both as to the intended effect and to the motives of Mr. Peckinpaugh. While Dante's position here would also seem to look down on 'mere' martial epic, with all its pointless slaughter, he nonetheless reveals an aptitude for the genre.
Puglia (Apulia) here, most commentators agree, is meant in its wider sense, i.e., not only the southeast portion of the Italian peninsula, but the region including Lazio. The Trojans are then Aeneas and his men (some believe the reference is to the later Romans). The 'long war' is the second Punic War (218-201 B.C.), during which the Romans suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of Hannibal's Carthaginian forces at Cannae (216 B.C.) in Apulia. Historians relate that after the battle an envoy of Hannibal showed the Carthaginian senate the vast number of gold rings taken from the fingers of noble Romans killed in the battle.
The problem of the extent of Dante's knowledge of Livy remains a vexed one. See Antonio Martina, 'Livio, Tito' (ED.1971.3), for a summary and bibliography through 1965 (especially important are the studies of Giuseppe Billanovich). Commentators point out that Dante here would rather seem to be following Orosius (or Augustine) than Livy, but still appeals to Livy as the most authoritative historian of Rome. His vast compendium, Ab urbe condita, did not come through the ages intact; precisely which parts of it were known to Dante is not known to us.
Robert Guiscard, a Norman, won many victories in Puglia ca. 1160-80 to consolidate his power as duke of the region, including what for Dante was the most important one, that over the Saracens, which apparently gained him his place in Paradiso XVIII.48.
The text alludes to Manfred's disastrous loss, occasioned, in Dante's view, by the betrayal of his Apulian allies, at the battle near Ceperano that was prologue to his final defeat and death at the hands of the forces of the French king Charles of Valois at the battle of Benevento (1266). Manfred is the first saved soul found once Dante begins his ascent of the mount of purgatory (Purg. III.112).
Two years after the defeat at Benevento, the Ghibelline Norman forces, now under Conradin, the grandson of the emperor Frederick II, suffered their final defeat near Tagliacozzo, in the Abruzzi, again at the hands of the forces of Charles of Anjou, who, after the battle, had Conradin put to death, thus ending the Angevin succession in Italy. Alardo was the French knight Érard de Valéry, who gave Charles the strategic advice that gained him military advantage on the field.
This image, suggesting layers of excavated battlefields, each containing vast areas of wounded soldiers holding out their mutilated limbs, gives us some sense of Dante's view of the end result of war, sheer human butchery. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to XXVIII.1-21) suggest that this bolgia brings into mind the image of a huge slaughterhouse.
For the Virgilian resonance (Aen. II.361-362) of these lines see, again, Tommaseo (comm. to these vv.). This is Aeneas's response when he must tell the terrible carnage during the night of the fall of Troy.
This disgusting image of Mohammed derives from Dante's conviction that the prophet was in fact a Christian whose schismatic behavior took the form of founding (in 630) what Dante considered a rival sect rather than a new religion, Islam. Thus Mohammed reveals himself as divided in two. For the earliest (and varied) responses to the presence of Mohammed in the poem, see Paola Locatin, “Maometto negli antichi commenti alla Commedia,” L'Alighieri 20 (2002), pp. 41-75.
Alì, disciple, cousin, and son-in-law of Mohammed, became the fourth leader of the Muslims. But the issues surrounding his succession in 656 divided them into two factions, Sunni and Shiite, that continue to this day.
All punished here are described by this verse. 'Scandal,' in this sense, means a promulgated doctrine that leads others to stumble and lose their way to the truth. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica II-II, q. 43, a. 1, resp., on the Greek word skandalon, or 'stumbling-block.' Thus all here either cause schism in others or themselves lead schismatic groups, the first three religious (Mohammed, Alì, Fra Dolcino), the last five political (Pier da Medicina, Malatestino, Curio, Mosca, Bertran de Born).
The unseen devil of this ditch joins the cast of devils of the Malebolge, the whippers of the first bolgia and the hookers of the fifth. In this case there seems to be one devil alone, perhaps intended to remind the reader of the solitary Cherub, with flaming sword, sent to guard the Garden after Adam and Eve had been ejected from it (Genesis 3:24). (See Purg. VIII.25-27, where this passage is more clearly alluded to.) It is only in Malebolge that we find such creatures.
Mohammed evidently believes that Dante is one of the dead sinners. But how or why he thinks that such as they can loiter in hell, doing a bit of sightseeing before they go to judgment, is not easily explained. Virgil's response (v. 49) makes it clear that only he, in this pair of visitors, is a dead soul.
Disabused of his erring view, Mohammed uses the occasion to send a message to his fellow in religious schism, Fra Dolcino. A northerner, from Novara (balancing the southern setting of the opening of the canto), Dolcino Tornielli was the head, from ca. 1300, of a group known as the Apostolic Brethren (gli Apostolici). This 'order' had as its aim the restoration of the simplicity of apostolic times to the Christian religion. Its enemies accused Dolcino of holding heretical ideas, such as the community of goods and women (see Oelsner, comm. to these verses). It did not help Dolcino's case that he was accompanied by a beautiful woman, Margaret of Trent, reputed to be his mistress. Pope Clement V preached a crusade against the Brethren in 1305. In 1307, starved out by their enemies in the high country to which they had retreated, the Brethren were captured. Margaret and Dolcino were burned at the stake.
Mohammed's placement of his suspended foot is read by some as a mere 'realistic detail.' Rasha Al-Sabah (“Inferno XXVIII: The Figure of Muhammad,” Yale Italian Studies 1 [1977], pp. 147-61) argues for an iconographic reading, based in a passage in St. Thomas on a passage in Proverbs (6:12-19), in which 'a wicked man with lying mouth, sewing discord,' has 'feet that are swift in running to mischief.' His posture, one foot suspended, may also refer to the Greek term (skandalon) for 'stumbling-block,' found at Inferno XXVIII.35.
This bloodied figure, thus sliced by the sword-wielding devil, will be revealed as Pier da Medicina at v. 73. For the reminiscence of Virgil's description of the disfigured visage of Deiphobus (Aen. VI.494-497), similarly deprived of his nose, see Scartazzini (comm. to XXVIII.64) and many later commentators.
Pier opens his windpipe to speak, since the devil's cut had wounded him there, thus preventing his breath from reaching his mouth.
The early commentators are not sure exactly who Pier of Medicina (a town between Bologna and Imola) was, but Dante and he apparently knew one another. While the nature of his schismatic behavior thus lies in shadow, the fact that his ensuing remarks refer to political intrigue would seem to mark him also as a political, rather than a religious, schismatic.
On verses 74-75 see Ignazio Baldelli, “'Lo dolce piano che da Vercelli a Marcabò dichina': Inferno XXVIII, 74-75,” Lettere Italiane 47 (1995), pp. 193-202.
Pier refers, in his prophecy, which parallels that given by Mohammed, initially to two victims of 'schism,' Guido del Cassero and Angiolello di Carignano, first identified by Guiniforto in 1440 (comm. to XXVIII.76-84), and then to the victimizer, Malatestino Malatesta, lord of Rimini. (He is referred to as 'the younger mastiff' in the last canto at Inf. XXVII.46.) The details are not known to any commentators, but apparently Dante knew that these two leaders of the city of Fano were tricked by Malatestino into coming to confer with him at the town of La Cattolica. His men caught them in their ship on their way (or after they left) and drowned them.
The passage has caused some dispute. Malatestino only came into.power in Rimini after the death of his father in 1312. This fact causes such as Petrocchi (“Intorno alla pubblicazione dell'Inferno e del Purgatorio,” Convivium 25 [1957], pp. 659-60) to argue that this is a second example of Dante's posterior revision of the text of the first cantica (see the note to Inf. XIX.79-87). However, and as Chiavacci Leonardi contends (Inferno, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1991], p. 845), the present tense for Malatestino's rulership is used, not by the poet, but by Pier da Medicina, and he is speaking in 1300. Two other things should also be noted: first, Malatestino was co-ruler of Rimini with his father, Malatesta, in 1295 or soon thereafter; second, the date of the incident referred to has never been established, since no commentator has any information about it. Still further, the reference to Malatestino in the previous canto has him functioning with his father in nefarious deeds ca. 1295. For at least these reasons there is no cause to believe that Dante is here referring to Malatestino's perfidy as occurring in 1312 or later.
Unriddled, the passage means that the entire Mediterranean Sea never witnessed so great a crime. For the phrase 'gente argolica,' meaning 'Greeks,' a synecdoche based on the part (the denizens of Argos) for the whole (Greece) see (Aen. II.78), as was noted by Torraca in 1905 (comm. to these verses).
Malatestino, one-eyed, holds Rimini, the city that Curio (v. 102) wishes he had never seen (because it was there that he offered the advice that condemns him to this punishment).
The two men of Fano (v. 76) will have no need of prayer for help against the tricky winds off Focara's point because they will be dead.
Dante, his appetite whetted by Pier's elliptical phrasing at v. 87, wants him to expand.
Pier opens the tongueless mouth of Curio, seen as a schismatic for his advice to Caesar to march on Rome, thus destroying the Republic and causing the civil wars. For Curio in Lucan and Dante, see Stull and Hollander, “The Lucanian Source of Dante's Ulysses,” Studi Danteschi 63 (1991 [1997]), pp. 27-28.
The description of Mosca dei Lamberti is one of the most affecting in this canto filled with affective moments. Mosca was among those Florentine citizens mentioned by Ciacco (Inf. VI.80) as having attempted to do good in the divided city; for his crime, of those mentioned he is the farthest down in hell. A fervent Ghibelline, in 1216 he urged the murder of Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti, who, engaged to a girl of the Amidei family, married a Donati instead. The result of this killing was the origin of the bitter rivalry between the Amidei and the Donati, Ghibellines and Guelphs respectively, and of the civil discord that tore Florence apart. Mosca is thus seen as a modern-day Curio, urging the powerful to do what in their hearts they must have known was not to be done.
His words, 'a done deed finds its purpose,' so mercilessly laconic, now cause him enough by way of regret that we can sense some justification in Ciacco's original characterization of him.
Dante is nonetheless stern in his criticism of Mosca, not accepting his gesture of penitence, and Mosca is left with his deserved heartbreak. There is no zest for the wicked in this poet.
The poet's self-assurance, playful though it certainly is, may offend some readers. He can narrate what is to follow because he knows he actually saw the next scene, a shade carrying his severed head. For the motif of the decapitated corpse see Paola Allegretti (“Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte [Inf.. XXVIII],” Tenzone 2 [2001], pp. 9-25), pp. 9-10.
Bertran de Born, one of the great poets of war of his or any time (and thus greatly admired by Ezra Pound in the last century) loved to see destruction of towns and men. One thinks of Robert Duvall's character in Francis Ford Coppolla's film Apocalyse Now, who loved the smell of napalm in the morning. His plangent tone, as he opens his remarks to Dante, would have bothered him considerably, had he been able to read this scene – and perhaps Dante thought exactly this himself, as he composed them. It is often pointed out that v. 132 is a reprise of a passage in the Lamentations of Jeremiah (1:12), already cited by Dante in the opening verses of an 'exploded' sonnet in (VN VII.3) to express his own solitary sadness in love. In a sense, they are part of Bertran's punishment, the 'tough guy' portrayed as self-pitying.
Bertran was a Gascon nobleman of the second half of the twelfth century. His poetry, which is reflected in several passages in this canto, is not the subject of his discourse. Rather, he condemns himself for his implacable schismatic actions at the English court, where he supported and encouraged the rebellious plotting of Prince Henry against his own father, Henry II, king of the realm. For a text that.1 encapsulates the problem presented in Bertran and all the other political schismatics, see Luke 11:17: 'Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation' (cited by Marianne Shapiro in “The Fictionalization of Bertran de Born [Inf. XXVIII],” Dante Studies 92 [1974], p. 114).
For the reference to Ahitophel's similar support and encouragement of Absalom's rebellion against his father, King David, see II Samuel 15:7-18:15).
On Bertran's poetry see Michelangelo Picone, “I trovatori di Dante: Bertran de Born,” Studi e problemi di critica testuale 19 (1979), pp. 71-94. For its resonance in the verses of this canto see Paola Allegretti (“Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte [Inf.. XXVIII],” Tenzone 2 [2001], pp. 9-18).
The word contrapasso is generally understood to be based on an Aristotelian term in its Latin translation, contrapassum, used in the same sense that the biblical concept of retribution, expressed in the Latin lex talionis (the taking of an eye for an eye, etc.), is understood to have. That is, one does something wrong and receives the appropriate punishment for doing it. Out of the Hebrew and Aristotelian concept (the latter refined by Thomas's commentary on Aristotle), Dante supposedly developed this idea, which is given a name here, but has been operative since we saw the first sinners in hell, the neutrals, in Canto III. For a lengthy and helpful gloss, see Singleton (comm. to this verse). Valerio Lucchesi (“Giustizia divina e linguaggio umano. Metafore e polisemie del contrapasso dantesco,” Studi Danteschi 63 [1991 (1997)], pp. 53-126) has mounted a complex argument attempting to deny this positive understanding of the term by Dante on the basis of its instability as a concept that St. Thomas actually embraces. For a thorough review of the entire question and of Dante's possible sources for the term (and understanding of them) see Peter Armour, “Dante's contrapasso: Context and Texts,” Italian Studies 55 (2000), pp. 1-20.
Commentary text is copyrighted and reproduced by permission.
Please enter a search term.
Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte
dicer del sangue e de le piaghe a pieno
ch'i' ora vidi, per narrar più volte?
Ogne lingua per certo verria meno
per lo nostro sermone e per la mente
c'hanno a tanto comprender poco seno.
S'el s'aunasse ancor tutta la gente
che già, in su la fortunata terra
di Puglia, fu del suo sangue dolente
per li Troiani e per la lunga guerra
che de l'anella fé sì alte spoglie,
come Livïo scrive, che non erra,
con quella che sentio di colpi doglie
per contastare a Ruberto Guiscardo;
e l'altra il cui ossame ancor s'accoglie
a Ceperan, là dove fu bugiardo
ciascun Pugliese, e là da Tagliacozzo,
dove sanz' arme vinse il vecchio Alardo;
e qual forato suo membro e qual mozzo
mostrasse, d'aequar sarebbe nulla
il modo de la nona bolgia sozzo.
Già veggia, per mezzul perdere o lulla,
com' io vidi un, così non si pertugia,
rotto dal mento infin dove si trulla.
Tra le gambe pendevan le minugia;
la corata pareva e 'l tristo sacco
che merda fa di quel che si trangugia.
Mentre che tutto in lui veder m'attacco,
guardommi e con le man s'aperse il petto,
dicendo: “Or vedi com' io mi dilacco!
vedi come storpiato è Mäometto!
Dinanzi a me sen va piangendo Alì,
fesso nel volto dal mento al ciuffetto.
E tutti li altri che tu vedi qui,
seminator di scandalo e di scisma
fuor vivi, e però son fessi così.
Un diavolo è qua dietro che n'accisma
sì crudelmente, al taglio de la spada
rimettendo ciascun di questa risma,
quand' avem volta la dolente strada;
però che le ferite son richiuse
prima ch'altri dinanzi li rivada.
Ma tu chi se' che 'n su lo scoglio muse,
forse per indugiar d'ire a la pena
ch'è giudicata in su le tue accuse?”
“Né morte 'l giunse ancor, né colpa 'l mena,”
rispuose 'l mio maestro, “a tormentarlo;
ma per dar lui esperïenza piena,
a me, che morto son, convien menarlo
per lo 'nferno qua giù di giro in giro;
e quest' è ver così com' io ti parlo.”
Più fuor di cento che, quando l'udiro,
s'arrestaron nel fosso a riguardarmi
per maraviglia, oblïando il martiro.
“Or dì a fra Dolcin dunque che s'armi,
tu che forse vedra' il sole in breve,
s'ello non vuol qui tosto seguitarmi,
sì di vivanda, che stretta di neve
non rechi la vittoria al Noarese,
ch'altrimenti acquistar non saria leve.”
Poi che l'un piè per girsene sospese,
Mäometto mi disse esta parola;
indi a partirsi in terra lo distese.
Un altro, che forata avea la gola
e tronco 'l naso infin sotto le ciglia,
e non avea mai ch'una orecchia sola,
ristato a riguardar per maraviglia
con li altri, innanzi a li altri aprì la canna,
ch'era di fuor d'ogne parte vermiglia,
e disse: “O tu cui colpa non condanna
e cu' io vidi in su terra latina,
se troppa simiglianza non m'inganna,
rimembriti di Pier da Medicina,
se mai torni a veder lo dolce piano
che da Vercelli a Marcabò dichina.
E fa sapere a' due miglior da Fano,
a messer Guido e anco ad Angiolello,
che, se l'antiveder qui non è vano,
gittati saran fuor di lor vasello
e mazzerati presso a la Cattolica
per tradimento d'un tiranno fello.
Tra l'isola di Cipri e di Maiolica
non vide mai sì gran fallo Nettuno,
non da pirate, non da gente argolica.
Quel traditor che vede pur con l'uno,
e tien la terra che tale qui meco
vorrebbe di vedere esser digiuno,
farà venirli a parlamento seco;
poi farà sì, ch'al vento di Focara
non sarà lor mestier voto né preco.”
E io a lui: “Dimostrami e dichiara,
se vuo' ch'i' porti sù di te novella,
chi è colui da la veduta amara.”
Allor puose la mano a la mascella
d'un suo compagno e la bocca li aperse,
gridando: “Questi è desso, e non favella.
Questi, scacciato, il dubitar sommerse
in Cesare, affermando che 'l fornito
sempre con danno l'attender sofferse.”
Oh quanto mi pareva sbigottito
con la lingua tagliata ne la strozza
Curïo, ch'a dir fu così ardito!
E un ch'avea l'una e l'altra man mozza,
levando i moncherin per l'aura fosca,
sì che 'l sangue facea la faccia sozza,
gridò: “Ricordera'ti anche del Mosca,
che disse, lasso! 'Capo ha cosa fatta,'
che fu mal seme per la gente tosca.”
E io li aggiunsi: “E morte di tua schiatta”;
per ch'elli, accumulando duol con duolo,
sen gio come persona trista e matta.
Ma io rimasi a riguardar lo stuolo,
e vidi cosa ch'io avrei paura,
sanza più prova, di contarla solo;
se non che coscïenza m'assicura,
la buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia
sotto l'asbergo del sentirsi pura.
Io vidi certo, e ancor par ch'io 'l veggia,
un busto sanza capo andar sì come
andavan li altri de la trista greggia;
e 'l capo tronco tenea per le chiome,
pesol con mano a guisa di lanterna:
e quel mirava noi e dicea: “Oh me!”
Di sé facea a sé stesso lucerna,
ed eran due in uno e uno in due;
com' esser può, quei sa che sì governa.
Quando diritto al piè del ponte fue,
levò 'l braccio alto con tutta la testa
per appressarne le parole sue
che fuoro: “Or vedi la pena molesta,
tu che, spirando, vai veggendo i morti:
vedi s'alcuna è grande come questa.
E perché tu di me novella porti,
sappi ch'i' son Bertram dal Bornio, quelli
che diedi al re giovane i ma' conforti.
Io feci il padre e 'l figlio in sé ribelli;
Achitofèl non fé più d'Absalone
e di Davìd coi malvagi punzelli.
Perch' io parti' così giunte persone,
partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!,
dal suo principio ch'è in questo troncone.
Così s'osserva in me lo contrapasso.”
Who ever could, e'en with untrammelled words,
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
Shed by the Romans and the lingering war
That of the rings made such illustrious spoils,
As Livy has recorded, who errs not,
With those who felt the agony of blows
By making counterstand to Robert Guiscard,
And all the rest, whose bones are gathered still
At Ceperano, where a renegade
Was each Apulian, and at Tagliacozzo,
Where without arms the old Alardo conquered,
And one his limb transpierced, and one lopped off,
Should show, it would be nothing to compare
With the disgusting mode of the ninth Bolgia.
A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
Was never shattered so, as I saw one
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.
Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
That maketh excrement of what is eaten.
While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
He looked at me, and opened with his hands
His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me;
How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
In front of me doth Ali weeping go,
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;
And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
Disseminators of scandal and of schism
While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.
A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us
Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge
Putting again each one of all this ream,
When we have gone around the doleful road;
By reason that our wounds are closed again
Ere any one in front of him repass.
But who art thou, that musest on the crag,
Perchance to postpone going to the pain
That is adjudged upon thine accusations?"
"Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him,"
My Master made reply, "to be tormented;
But to procure him full experience,
Me, who am dead, behoves it to conduct him
Down here through Hell, from circle unto circle;
And this is true as that I speak to thee."
More than a hundred were there when they heard him,
Who in the moat stood still to look at me,
Through wonderment oblivious of their torture.
"Now say to Fra Dolcino, then, to arm him,
Thou, who perhaps wilt shortly see the sun,
If soon he wish not here to follow me,
So with provisions, that no stress of snow
May give the victory to the Novarese,
Which otherwise to gain would not be easy."
After one foot to go away he lifted,
This word did Mahomet say unto me,
Then to depart upon the ground he stretched it.
Another one, who had his throat pierced through,
And nose cut off close underneath the brows,
And had no longer but a single ear,
Staying to look in wonder with the others,
Before the others did his gullet open,
Which outwardly was red in every part,
And said: "O thou, whom guilt doth not condemn,
And whom I once saw up in Latian land,
Unless too great similitude deceive me,
Call to remembrance Pier da Medicina,
If e'er thou see again the lovely plain
That from Vercelli slopes to Marcabo,
And make it known to the best two of Fano,
To Messer Guido and Angiolello likewise,
That if foreseeing here be not in vain,
Cast over from their vessel shall they be,
And drowned near unto the Cattolica,
By the betrayal of a tyrant fell.
Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca
Neptune ne'er yet beheld so great a crime,
Neither of pirates nor Argolic people.
That traitor, who sees only with one eye,
And holds the land, which some one here with me
Would fain be fasting from the vision of,
Will make them come unto a parley with him;
Then will do so, that to Focara's wind
They will not stand in need of vow or prayer."
And I to him: "Show to me and declare,
If thou wouldst have me bear up news of thee,
Who is this person of the bitter vision."
Then did he lay his hand upon the jaw
Of one of his companions, and his mouth
Oped, crying: "This is he, and he speaks not.
This one, being banished, every doubt submerged
In Caesar by affirming the forearmed
Always with detriment allowed delay."
O how bewildered unto me appeared,
With tongue asunder in his windpipe slit,
Curio, who in speaking was so bold!
And one, who both his hands dissevered had,
The stumps uplifting through the murky air,
So that the blood made horrible his face,
Cried out: "Thou shalt remember Mosca also,
Who said, alas! 'A thing done has an end!'
Which was an ill seed for the Tuscan people."
"And death unto thy race," thereto I added;
Whence he, accumulating woe on woe,
Departed, like a person sad and crazed.
But I remained to look upon the crowd;
And saw a thing which I should be afraid,
Without some further proof, even to recount,
If it were not that conscience reassures me,
That good companion which emboldens man
Beneath the hauberk of its feeling pure.
I truly saw, and still I seem to see it,
A trunk without a head walk in like manner
As walked the others of the mournful herd.
And by the hair it held the head dissevered,
Hung from the hand in fashion of a lantern,
And that upon us gazed and said: "O me!"
It of itself made to itself a lamp,
And they were two in one, and one in two;
How that can be, He knows who so ordains it.
When it was come close to the bridge's foot,
It lifted high its arm with all the head,
To bring more closely unto us its words,
Which were: "Behold now the sore penalty,
Thou, who dost breathing go the dead beholding;
Behold if any be as great as this.
And so that thou may carry news of me,
Know that Bertram de Born am I, the same
Who gave to the Young King the evil comfort.
I made the father and the son rebellious;
Achitophel not more with Absalom
And David did with his accursed goadings.
Because I parted persons so united,
Parted do I now bear my brain, alas!
From its beginning, which is in this trunk.
Thus is observed in me the counterpoise."
For Dante's disclaimer of the ability to describe the blood and wounds that surpass both words and memory (even were he to revert to prose to do so) see Virgil's similar disclaimer in (Aen. VI.625-627): 'And if I had a hundred tongues and as many mouths, along with a voice of iron, I could not put together all the shapes of crime nor run through all the catalogue of torments.' The passage was first cited by Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to XXVIII.1-3) and is now a commonplace in the commentaries. It is remembered probably even more evidently at Paradiso XXIII.55-59, as was perhaps first noted by Tommaseo (comm. to Par. XXIII.55-57).
This elliptical version of a simile, so rich in its catalogue of the horrors of war, involves four battles (or series of battles), two of them ancient, two modern, roughly as follows:
500 BC ca. Aeneas's Trojans triumph in south and central Italy;
216 BC Romans are defeated by the Carthaginians at Cannae;
1170 ca. Robert Guiscard's Normans defeat the Saracens;
1266 & 1268 Manfred and then Conradin are defeated by Charles of Anjou.
In this series of military actions the Roman and/or imperial side first wins, then loses disastrously. The intrinsic view of history here is more chaotic than directed. Absent is Dante's more optimistic view of history unfolding as a Roman and Christian manifestation of the spirit moving through history to its appointed goal (if this sounds like Hegel, it is meant to). And we might further reflect that winning and losing battles has little to do with one's final destination in God's plan: Aeneas wins, but is in Limbo (Inf. IV.122), Robert Guiscard wins and is in heaven (Par. XVIII.48), Manfred loses and is on his way to heaven (Purg. III.112).
For Dante's relation to martial epic, a genre surely drawn to our attention by these scenes of war, see Hollander (“Dante and the Martial Epic,” Mediaevalia 12 [1989]), pp. 62-91 (tr. ital. “Dante e l'epopea marziale,” Letture classensi 18 [1989], pp. 93-113). And for the related question of Dante's relationship to Guittone d'Arezzo as 'epic poet' (as well as rival in love lyric), see the essays by Gorni, Antonelli, and Mazzoni in Guittone d'Arezzo nel settimo centenario della morte: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Arezzo (22-24 aprile 1994), ed. M. Picone (Florence: Franco Cesati, 1995), pp. 307-83; see also Teodolinda Barolini (“Guittone's Ora parrà, Dante's Doglia mi reca, and the Commedia's Anatomy of Desire,” in Seminario Dantesco Internazionale: Atti del primo convegno tenutosi al Chauncey Conference Center, Princeton, 21-23 ottobre 1994, ed. Z. G. Baranski [Florence: Le Lettere, 1997], pp. 3-23). In De vulgari eloquentia (II.ii.7-8) Dante had listed only Bertran de Born (see the note to Inf. XXVIII.130-138) as a poet of salus, or 'arms,' that is, a writer of 'epic.' Since his presence is so amply felt in this canto, starting with these lines, a redoing of the opening of Bertran's canzone 'Si tuit li dol,' as a number of twentieth-century commentators have observed, we may surmise that Dante here, possibly for the first time, thinks of the epic resonance of his own poem. And while he seems to present martial epic as essentially the expression of the brutality of war, in the mode of Bertran, the fact that his poem here involves itself in the matter of martial epic may have made him feel that he himself had some title as a practitioner in this mode, where in De vulgari he was himself obviously not at all interested in it (there he presented himself as a 'poet of rectitude,' not of 'arms'). Mario Fubini (“Inferno: canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera, dir. Mario Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1962)], pp. 999-1021) refers to this as the 'canto delle armi' in which Dante becomes 'il Bertram italiano' (p. 1005). A countering view is presented by Mazzotta (Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993], pp. 75-95), who sees this canto as Dante's 'farewell to arms.' Once could argue that, since Dante had never done poetry of a martial kind before, this is more like his 'hello.' Many years ago the director Sam Peckinpaugh was asked in an interview on television why there was so much insistent, close-up, slow-motion depiction of violence in his film The Wild Bunch. He replied that by so presenting it he had hoped to repel his audience, instilling in them a great dislike of such anti-social activity. Bill Russell, the Boston Celtics star center at the time, his interlocutor, was convincingly dubious both as to the intended effect and to the motives of Mr. Peckinpaugh. While Dante's position here would also seem to look down on 'mere' martial epic, with all its pointless slaughter, he nonetheless reveals an aptitude for the genre.
Puglia (Apulia) here, most commentators agree, is meant in its wider sense, i.e., not only the southeast portion of the Italian peninsula, but the region including Lazio. The Trojans are then Aeneas and his men (some believe the reference is to the later Romans). The 'long war' is the second Punic War (218-201 B.C.), during which the Romans suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of Hannibal's Carthaginian forces at Cannae (216 B.C.) in Apulia. Historians relate that after the battle an envoy of Hannibal showed the Carthaginian senate the vast number of gold rings taken from the fingers of noble Romans killed in the battle.
The problem of the extent of Dante's knowledge of Livy remains a vexed one. See Antonio Martina, 'Livio, Tito' (ED.1971.3), for a summary and bibliography through 1965 (especially important are the studies of Giuseppe Billanovich). Commentators point out that Dante here would rather seem to be following Orosius (or Augustine) than Livy, but still appeals to Livy as the most authoritative historian of Rome. His vast compendium, Ab urbe condita, did not come through the ages intact; precisely which parts of it were known to Dante is not known to us.
Robert Guiscard, a Norman, won many victories in Puglia ca. 1160-80 to consolidate his power as duke of the region, including what for Dante was the most important one, that over the Saracens, which apparently gained him his place in Paradiso XVIII.48.
The text alludes to Manfred's disastrous loss, occasioned, in Dante's view, by the betrayal of his Apulian allies, at the battle near Ceperano that was prologue to his final defeat and death at the hands of the forces of the French king Charles of Valois at the battle of Benevento (1266). Manfred is the first saved soul found once Dante begins his ascent of the mount of purgatory (Purg. III.112).
Two years after the defeat at Benevento, the Ghibelline Norman forces, now under Conradin, the grandson of the emperor Frederick II, suffered their final defeat near Tagliacozzo, in the Abruzzi, again at the hands of the forces of Charles of Anjou, who, after the battle, had Conradin put to death, thus ending the Angevin succession in Italy. Alardo was the French knight Érard de Valéry, who gave Charles the strategic advice that gained him military advantage on the field.
This image, suggesting layers of excavated battlefields, each containing vast areas of wounded soldiers holding out their mutilated limbs, gives us some sense of Dante's view of the end result of war, sheer human butchery. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to XXVIII.1-21) suggest that this bolgia brings into mind the image of a huge slaughterhouse.
For the Virgilian resonance (Aen. II.361-362) of these lines see, again, Tommaseo (comm. to these vv.). This is Aeneas's response when he must tell the terrible carnage during the night of the fall of Troy.
This disgusting image of Mohammed derives from Dante's conviction that the prophet was in fact a Christian whose schismatic behavior took the form of founding (in 630) what Dante considered a rival sect rather than a new religion, Islam. Thus Mohammed reveals himself as divided in two. For the earliest (and varied) responses to the presence of Mohammed in the poem, see Paola Locatin, “Maometto negli antichi commenti alla Commedia,” L'Alighieri 20 (2002), pp. 41-75.
Alì, disciple, cousin, and son-in-law of Mohammed, became the fourth leader of the Muslims. But the issues surrounding his succession in 656 divided them into two factions, Sunni and Shiite, that continue to this day.
All punished here are described by this verse. 'Scandal,' in this sense, means a promulgated doctrine that leads others to stumble and lose their way to the truth. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica II-II, q. 43, a. 1, resp., on the Greek word skandalon, or 'stumbling-block.' Thus all here either cause schism in others or themselves lead schismatic groups, the first three religious (Mohammed, Alì, Fra Dolcino), the last five political (Pier da Medicina, Malatestino, Curio, Mosca, Bertran de Born).
The unseen devil of this ditch joins the cast of devils of the Malebolge, the whippers of the first bolgia and the hookers of the fifth. In this case there seems to be one devil alone, perhaps intended to remind the reader of the solitary Cherub, with flaming sword, sent to guard the Garden after Adam and Eve had been ejected from it (Genesis 3:24). (See Purg. VIII.25-27, where this passage is more clearly alluded to.) It is only in Malebolge that we find such creatures.
Mohammed evidently believes that Dante is one of the dead sinners. But how or why he thinks that such as they can loiter in hell, doing a bit of sightseeing before they go to judgment, is not easily explained. Virgil's response (v. 49) makes it clear that only he, in this pair of visitors, is a dead soul.
Disabused of his erring view, Mohammed uses the occasion to send a message to his fellow in religious schism, Fra Dolcino. A northerner, from Novara (balancing the southern setting of the opening of the canto), Dolcino Tornielli was the head, from ca. 1300, of a group known as the Apostolic Brethren (gli Apostolici). This 'order' had as its aim the restoration of the simplicity of apostolic times to the Christian religion. Its enemies accused Dolcino of holding heretical ideas, such as the community of goods and women (see Oelsner, comm. to these verses). It did not help Dolcino's case that he was accompanied by a beautiful woman, Margaret of Trent, reputed to be his mistress. Pope Clement V preached a crusade against the Brethren in 1305. In 1307, starved out by their enemies in the high country to which they had retreated, the Brethren were captured. Margaret and Dolcino were burned at the stake.
Mohammed's placement of his suspended foot is read by some as a mere 'realistic detail.' Rasha Al-Sabah (“Inferno XXVIII: The Figure of Muhammad,” Yale Italian Studies 1 [1977], pp. 147-61) argues for an iconographic reading, based in a passage in St. Thomas on a passage in Proverbs (6:12-19), in which 'a wicked man with lying mouth, sewing discord,' has 'feet that are swift in running to mischief.' His posture, one foot suspended, may also refer to the Greek term (skandalon) for 'stumbling-block,' found at Inferno XXVIII.35.
This bloodied figure, thus sliced by the sword-wielding devil, will be revealed as Pier da Medicina at v. 73. For the reminiscence of Virgil's description of the disfigured visage of Deiphobus (Aen. VI.494-497), similarly deprived of his nose, see Scartazzini (comm. to XXVIII.64) and many later commentators.
Pier opens his windpipe to speak, since the devil's cut had wounded him there, thus preventing his breath from reaching his mouth.
The early commentators are not sure exactly who Pier of Medicina (a town between Bologna and Imola) was, but Dante and he apparently knew one another. While the nature of his schismatic behavior thus lies in shadow, the fact that his ensuing remarks refer to political intrigue would seem to mark him also as a political, rather than a religious, schismatic.
On verses 74-75 see Ignazio Baldelli, “'Lo dolce piano che da Vercelli a Marcabò dichina': Inferno XXVIII, 74-75,” Lettere Italiane 47 (1995), pp. 193-202.
Pier refers, in his prophecy, which parallels that given by Mohammed, initially to two victims of 'schism,' Guido del Cassero and Angiolello di Carignano, first identified by Guiniforto in 1440 (comm. to XXVIII.76-84), and then to the victimizer, Malatestino Malatesta, lord of Rimini. (He is referred to as 'the younger mastiff' in the last canto at Inf. XXVII.46.) The details are not known to any commentators, but apparently Dante knew that these two leaders of the city of Fano were tricked by Malatestino into coming to confer with him at the town of La Cattolica. His men caught them in their ship on their way (or after they left) and drowned them.
The passage has caused some dispute. Malatestino only came into.power in Rimini after the death of his father in 1312. This fact causes such as Petrocchi (“Intorno alla pubblicazione dell'Inferno e del Purgatorio,” Convivium 25 [1957], pp. 659-60) to argue that this is a second example of Dante's posterior revision of the text of the first cantica (see the note to Inf. XIX.79-87). However, and as Chiavacci Leonardi contends (Inferno, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1991], p. 845), the present tense for Malatestino's rulership is used, not by the poet, but by Pier da Medicina, and he is speaking in 1300. Two other things should also be noted: first, Malatestino was co-ruler of Rimini with his father, Malatesta, in 1295 or soon thereafter; second, the date of the incident referred to has never been established, since no commentator has any information about it. Still further, the reference to Malatestino in the previous canto has him functioning with his father in nefarious deeds ca. 1295. For at least these reasons there is no cause to believe that Dante is here referring to Malatestino's perfidy as occurring in 1312 or later.
Unriddled, the passage means that the entire Mediterranean Sea never witnessed so great a crime. For the phrase 'gente argolica,' meaning 'Greeks,' a synecdoche based on the part (the denizens of Argos) for the whole (Greece) see (Aen. II.78), as was noted by Torraca in 1905 (comm. to these verses).
Malatestino, one-eyed, holds Rimini, the city that Curio (v. 102) wishes he had never seen (because it was there that he offered the advice that condemns him to this punishment).
The two men of Fano (v. 76) will have no need of prayer for help against the tricky winds off Focara's point because they will be dead.
Dante, his appetite whetted by Pier's elliptical phrasing at v. 87, wants him to expand.
Pier opens the tongueless mouth of Curio, seen as a schismatic for his advice to Caesar to march on Rome, thus destroying the Republic and causing the civil wars. For Curio in Lucan and Dante, see Stull and Hollander, “The Lucanian Source of Dante's Ulysses,” Studi Danteschi 63 (1991 [1997]), pp. 27-28.
The description of Mosca dei Lamberti is one of the most affecting in this canto filled with affective moments. Mosca was among those Florentine citizens mentioned by Ciacco (Inf. VI.80) as having attempted to do good in the divided city; for his crime, of those mentioned he is the farthest down in hell. A fervent Ghibelline, in 1216 he urged the murder of Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti, who, engaged to a girl of the Amidei family, married a Donati instead. The result of this killing was the origin of the bitter rivalry between the Amidei and the Donati, Ghibellines and Guelphs respectively, and of the civil discord that tore Florence apart. Mosca is thus seen as a modern-day Curio, urging the powerful to do what in their hearts they must have known was not to be done.
His words, 'a done deed finds its purpose,' so mercilessly laconic, now cause him enough by way of regret that we can sense some justification in Ciacco's original characterization of him.
Dante is nonetheless stern in his criticism of Mosca, not accepting his gesture of penitence, and Mosca is left with his deserved heartbreak. There is no zest for the wicked in this poet.
The poet's self-assurance, playful though it certainly is, may offend some readers. He can narrate what is to follow because he knows he actually saw the next scene, a shade carrying his severed head. For the motif of the decapitated corpse see Paola Allegretti (“Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte [Inf.. XXVIII],” Tenzone 2 [2001], pp. 9-25), pp. 9-10.
Bertran de Born, one of the great poets of war of his or any time (and thus greatly admired by Ezra Pound in the last century) loved to see destruction of towns and men. One thinks of Robert Duvall's character in Francis Ford Coppolla's film Apocalyse Now, who loved the smell of napalm in the morning. His plangent tone, as he opens his remarks to Dante, would have bothered him considerably, had he been able to read this scene – and perhaps Dante thought exactly this himself, as he composed them. It is often pointed out that v. 132 is a reprise of a passage in the Lamentations of Jeremiah (1:12), already cited by Dante in the opening verses of an 'exploded' sonnet in (VN VII.3) to express his own solitary sadness in love. In a sense, they are part of Bertran's punishment, the 'tough guy' portrayed as self-pitying.
Bertran was a Gascon nobleman of the second half of the twelfth century. His poetry, which is reflected in several passages in this canto, is not the subject of his discourse. Rather, he condemns himself for his implacable schismatic actions at the English court, where he supported and encouraged the rebellious plotting of Prince Henry against his own father, Henry II, king of the realm. For a text that.1 encapsulates the problem presented in Bertran and all the other political schismatics, see Luke 11:17: 'Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation' (cited by Marianne Shapiro in “The Fictionalization of Bertran de Born [Inf. XXVIII],” Dante Studies 92 [1974], p. 114).
For the reference to Ahitophel's similar support and encouragement of Absalom's rebellion against his father, King David, see II Samuel 15:7-18:15).
On Bertran's poetry see Michelangelo Picone, “I trovatori di Dante: Bertran de Born,” Studi e problemi di critica testuale 19 (1979), pp. 71-94. For its resonance in the verses of this canto see Paola Allegretti (“Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte [Inf.. XXVIII],” Tenzone 2 [2001], pp. 9-18).
The word contrapasso is generally understood to be based on an Aristotelian term in its Latin translation, contrapassum, used in the same sense that the biblical concept of retribution, expressed in the Latin lex talionis (the taking of an eye for an eye, etc.), is understood to have. That is, one does something wrong and receives the appropriate punishment for doing it. Out of the Hebrew and Aristotelian concept (the latter refined by Thomas's commentary on Aristotle), Dante supposedly developed this idea, which is given a name here, but has been operative since we saw the first sinners in hell, the neutrals, in Canto III. For a lengthy and helpful gloss, see Singleton (comm. to this verse). Valerio Lucchesi (“Giustizia divina e linguaggio umano. Metafore e polisemie del contrapasso dantesco,” Studi Danteschi 63 [1991 (1997)], pp. 53-126) has mounted a complex argument attempting to deny this positive understanding of the term by Dante on the basis of its instability as a concept that St. Thomas actually embraces. For a thorough review of the entire question and of Dante's possible sources for the term (and understanding of them) see Peter Armour, “Dante's contrapasso: Context and Texts,” Italian Studies 55 (2000), pp. 1-20.
Commentary text is copyrighted and reproduced by permission.
Please enter a search term.
Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte
dicer del sangue e de le piaghe a pieno
ch'i' ora vidi, per narrar più volte?
Ogne lingua per certo verria meno
per lo nostro sermone e per la mente
c'hanno a tanto comprender poco seno.
S'el s'aunasse ancor tutta la gente
che già, in su la fortunata terra
di Puglia, fu del suo sangue dolente
per li Troiani e per la lunga guerra
che de l'anella fé sì alte spoglie,
come Livïo scrive, che non erra,
con quella che sentio di colpi doglie
per contastare a Ruberto Guiscardo;
e l'altra il cui ossame ancor s'accoglie
a Ceperan, là dove fu bugiardo
ciascun Pugliese, e là da Tagliacozzo,
dove sanz' arme vinse il vecchio Alardo;
e qual forato suo membro e qual mozzo
mostrasse, d'aequar sarebbe nulla
il modo de la nona bolgia sozzo.
Già veggia, per mezzul perdere o lulla,
com' io vidi un, così non si pertugia,
rotto dal mento infin dove si trulla.
Tra le gambe pendevan le minugia;
la corata pareva e 'l tristo sacco
che merda fa di quel che si trangugia.
Mentre che tutto in lui veder m'attacco,
guardommi e con le man s'aperse il petto,
dicendo: “Or vedi com' io mi dilacco!
vedi come storpiato è Mäometto!
Dinanzi a me sen va piangendo Alì,
fesso nel volto dal mento al ciuffetto.
E tutti li altri che tu vedi qui,
seminator di scandalo e di scisma
fuor vivi, e però son fessi così.
Un diavolo è qua dietro che n'accisma
sì crudelmente, al taglio de la spada
rimettendo ciascun di questa risma,
quand' avem volta la dolente strada;
però che le ferite son richiuse
prima ch'altri dinanzi li rivada.
Ma tu chi se' che 'n su lo scoglio muse,
forse per indugiar d'ire a la pena
ch'è giudicata in su le tue accuse?”
“Né morte 'l giunse ancor, né colpa 'l mena,”
rispuose 'l mio maestro, “a tormentarlo;
ma per dar lui esperïenza piena,
a me, che morto son, convien menarlo
per lo 'nferno qua giù di giro in giro;
e quest' è ver così com' io ti parlo.”
Più fuor di cento che, quando l'udiro,
s'arrestaron nel fosso a riguardarmi
per maraviglia, oblïando il martiro.
“Or dì a fra Dolcin dunque che s'armi,
tu che forse vedra' il sole in breve,
s'ello non vuol qui tosto seguitarmi,
sì di vivanda, che stretta di neve
non rechi la vittoria al Noarese,
ch'altrimenti acquistar non saria leve.”
Poi che l'un piè per girsene sospese,
Mäometto mi disse esta parola;
indi a partirsi in terra lo distese.
Un altro, che forata avea la gola
e tronco 'l naso infin sotto le ciglia,
e non avea mai ch'una orecchia sola,
ristato a riguardar per maraviglia
con li altri, innanzi a li altri aprì la canna,
ch'era di fuor d'ogne parte vermiglia,
e disse: “O tu cui colpa non condanna
e cu' io vidi in su terra latina,
se troppa simiglianza non m'inganna,
rimembriti di Pier da Medicina,
se mai torni a veder lo dolce piano
che da Vercelli a Marcabò dichina.
E fa sapere a' due miglior da Fano,
a messer Guido e anco ad Angiolello,
che, se l'antiveder qui non è vano,
gittati saran fuor di lor vasello
e mazzerati presso a la Cattolica
per tradimento d'un tiranno fello.
Tra l'isola di Cipri e di Maiolica
non vide mai sì gran fallo Nettuno,
non da pirate, non da gente argolica.
Quel traditor che vede pur con l'uno,
e tien la terra che tale qui meco
vorrebbe di vedere esser digiuno,
farà venirli a parlamento seco;
poi farà sì, ch'al vento di Focara
non sarà lor mestier voto né preco.”
E io a lui: “Dimostrami e dichiara,
se vuo' ch'i' porti sù di te novella,
chi è colui da la veduta amara.”
Allor puose la mano a la mascella
d'un suo compagno e la bocca li aperse,
gridando: “Questi è desso, e non favella.
Questi, scacciato, il dubitar sommerse
in Cesare, affermando che 'l fornito
sempre con danno l'attender sofferse.”
Oh quanto mi pareva sbigottito
con la lingua tagliata ne la strozza
Curïo, ch'a dir fu così ardito!
E un ch'avea l'una e l'altra man mozza,
levando i moncherin per l'aura fosca,
sì che 'l sangue facea la faccia sozza,
gridò: “Ricordera'ti anche del Mosca,
che disse, lasso! 'Capo ha cosa fatta,'
che fu mal seme per la gente tosca.”
E io li aggiunsi: “E morte di tua schiatta”;
per ch'elli, accumulando duol con duolo,
sen gio come persona trista e matta.
Ma io rimasi a riguardar lo stuolo,
e vidi cosa ch'io avrei paura,
sanza più prova, di contarla solo;
se non che coscïenza m'assicura,
la buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia
sotto l'asbergo del sentirsi pura.
Io vidi certo, e ancor par ch'io 'l veggia,
un busto sanza capo andar sì come
andavan li altri de la trista greggia;
e 'l capo tronco tenea per le chiome,
pesol con mano a guisa di lanterna:
e quel mirava noi e dicea: “Oh me!”
Di sé facea a sé stesso lucerna,
ed eran due in uno e uno in due;
com' esser può, quei sa che sì governa.
Quando diritto al piè del ponte fue,
levò 'l braccio alto con tutta la testa
per appressarne le parole sue
che fuoro: “Or vedi la pena molesta,
tu che, spirando, vai veggendo i morti:
vedi s'alcuna è grande come questa.
E perché tu di me novella porti,
sappi ch'i' son Bertram dal Bornio, quelli
che diedi al re giovane i ma' conforti.
Io feci il padre e 'l figlio in sé ribelli;
Achitofèl non fé più d'Absalone
e di Davìd coi malvagi punzelli.
Perch' io parti' così giunte persone,
partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!,
dal suo principio ch'è in questo troncone.
Così s'osserva in me lo contrapasso.”
Who ever could, e'en with untrammelled words,
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
Shed by the Romans and the lingering war
That of the rings made such illustrious spoils,
As Livy has recorded, who errs not,
With those who felt the agony of blows
By making counterstand to Robert Guiscard,
And all the rest, whose bones are gathered still
At Ceperano, where a renegade
Was each Apulian, and at Tagliacozzo,
Where without arms the old Alardo conquered,
And one his limb transpierced, and one lopped off,
Should show, it would be nothing to compare
With the disgusting mode of the ninth Bolgia.
A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
Was never shattered so, as I saw one
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.
Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
That maketh excrement of what is eaten.
While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
He looked at me, and opened with his hands
His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me;
How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
In front of me doth Ali weeping go,
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;
And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
Disseminators of scandal and of schism
While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.
A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us
Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge
Putting again each one of all this ream,
When we have gone around the doleful road;
By reason that our wounds are closed again
Ere any one in front of him repass.
But who art thou, that musest on the crag,
Perchance to postpone going to the pain
That is adjudged upon thine accusations?"
"Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him,"
My Master made reply, "to be tormented;
But to procure him full experience,
Me, who am dead, behoves it to conduct him
Down here through Hell, from circle unto circle;
And this is true as that I speak to thee."
More than a hundred were there when they heard him,
Who in the moat stood still to look at me,
Through wonderment oblivious of their torture.
"Now say to Fra Dolcino, then, to arm him,
Thou, who perhaps wilt shortly see the sun,
If soon he wish not here to follow me,
So with provisions, that no stress of snow
May give the victory to the Novarese,
Which otherwise to gain would not be easy."
After one foot to go away he lifted,
This word did Mahomet say unto me,
Then to depart upon the ground he stretched it.
Another one, who had his throat pierced through,
And nose cut off close underneath the brows,
And had no longer but a single ear,
Staying to look in wonder with the others,
Before the others did his gullet open,
Which outwardly was red in every part,
And said: "O thou, whom guilt doth not condemn,
And whom I once saw up in Latian land,
Unless too great similitude deceive me,
Call to remembrance Pier da Medicina,
If e'er thou see again the lovely plain
That from Vercelli slopes to Marcabo,
And make it known to the best two of Fano,
To Messer Guido and Angiolello likewise,
That if foreseeing here be not in vain,
Cast over from their vessel shall they be,
And drowned near unto the Cattolica,
By the betrayal of a tyrant fell.
Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca
Neptune ne'er yet beheld so great a crime,
Neither of pirates nor Argolic people.
That traitor, who sees only with one eye,
And holds the land, which some one here with me
Would fain be fasting from the vision of,
Will make them come unto a parley with him;
Then will do so, that to Focara's wind
They will not stand in need of vow or prayer."
And I to him: "Show to me and declare,
If thou wouldst have me bear up news of thee,
Who is this person of the bitter vision."
Then did he lay his hand upon the jaw
Of one of his companions, and his mouth
Oped, crying: "This is he, and he speaks not.
This one, being banished, every doubt submerged
In Caesar by affirming the forearmed
Always with detriment allowed delay."
O how bewildered unto me appeared,
With tongue asunder in his windpipe slit,
Curio, who in speaking was so bold!
And one, who both his hands dissevered had,
The stumps uplifting through the murky air,
So that the blood made horrible his face,
Cried out: "Thou shalt remember Mosca also,
Who said, alas! 'A thing done has an end!'
Which was an ill seed for the Tuscan people."
"And death unto thy race," thereto I added;
Whence he, accumulating woe on woe,
Departed, like a person sad and crazed.
But I remained to look upon the crowd;
And saw a thing which I should be afraid,
Without some further proof, even to recount,
If it were not that conscience reassures me,
That good companion which emboldens man
Beneath the hauberk of its feeling pure.
I truly saw, and still I seem to see it,
A trunk without a head walk in like manner
As walked the others of the mournful herd.
And by the hair it held the head dissevered,
Hung from the hand in fashion of a lantern,
And that upon us gazed and said: "O me!"
It of itself made to itself a lamp,
And they were two in one, and one in two;
How that can be, He knows who so ordains it.
When it was come close to the bridge's foot,
It lifted high its arm with all the head,
To bring more closely unto us its words,
Which were: "Behold now the sore penalty,
Thou, who dost breathing go the dead beholding;
Behold if any be as great as this.
And so that thou may carry news of me,
Know that Bertram de Born am I, the same
Who gave to the Young King the evil comfort.
I made the father and the son rebellious;
Achitophel not more with Absalom
And David did with his accursed goadings.
Because I parted persons so united,
Parted do I now bear my brain, alas!
From its beginning, which is in this trunk.
Thus is observed in me the counterpoise."
For Dante's disclaimer of the ability to describe the blood and wounds that surpass both words and memory (even were he to revert to prose to do so) see Virgil's similar disclaimer in (Aen. VI.625-627): 'And if I had a hundred tongues and as many mouths, along with a voice of iron, I could not put together all the shapes of crime nor run through all the catalogue of torments.' The passage was first cited by Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to XXVIII.1-3) and is now a commonplace in the commentaries. It is remembered probably even more evidently at Paradiso XXIII.55-59, as was perhaps first noted by Tommaseo (comm. to Par. XXIII.55-57).
This elliptical version of a simile, so rich in its catalogue of the horrors of war, involves four battles (or series of battles), two of them ancient, two modern, roughly as follows:
500 BC ca. Aeneas's Trojans triumph in south and central Italy;
216 BC Romans are defeated by the Carthaginians at Cannae;
1170 ca. Robert Guiscard's Normans defeat the Saracens;
1266 & 1268 Manfred and then Conradin are defeated by Charles of Anjou.
In this series of military actions the Roman and/or imperial side first wins, then loses disastrously. The intrinsic view of history here is more chaotic than directed. Absent is Dante's more optimistic view of history unfolding as a Roman and Christian manifestation of the spirit moving through history to its appointed goal (if this sounds like Hegel, it is meant to). And we might further reflect that winning and losing battles has little to do with one's final destination in God's plan: Aeneas wins, but is in Limbo (Inf. IV.122), Robert Guiscard wins and is in heaven (Par. XVIII.48), Manfred loses and is on his way to heaven (Purg. III.112).
For Dante's relation to martial epic, a genre surely drawn to our attention by these scenes of war, see Hollander (“Dante and the Martial Epic,” Mediaevalia 12 [1989]), pp. 62-91 (tr. ital. “Dante e l'epopea marziale,” Letture classensi 18 [1989], pp. 93-113). And for the related question of Dante's relationship to Guittone d'Arezzo as 'epic poet' (as well as rival in love lyric), see the essays by Gorni, Antonelli, and Mazzoni in Guittone d'Arezzo nel settimo centenario della morte: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Arezzo (22-24 aprile 1994), ed. M. Picone (Florence: Franco Cesati, 1995), pp. 307-83; see also Teodolinda Barolini (“Guittone's Ora parrà, Dante's Doglia mi reca, and the Commedia's Anatomy of Desire,” in Seminario Dantesco Internazionale: Atti del primo convegno tenutosi al Chauncey Conference Center, Princeton, 21-23 ottobre 1994, ed. Z. G. Baranski [Florence: Le Lettere, 1997], pp. 3-23). In De vulgari eloquentia (II.ii.7-8) Dante had listed only Bertran de Born (see the note to Inf. XXVIII.130-138) as a poet of salus, or 'arms,' that is, a writer of 'epic.' Since his presence is so amply felt in this canto, starting with these lines, a redoing of the opening of Bertran's canzone 'Si tuit li dol,' as a number of twentieth-century commentators have observed, we may surmise that Dante here, possibly for the first time, thinks of the epic resonance of his own poem. And while he seems to present martial epic as essentially the expression of the brutality of war, in the mode of Bertran, the fact that his poem here involves itself in the matter of martial epic may have made him feel that he himself had some title as a practitioner in this mode, where in De vulgari he was himself obviously not at all interested in it (there he presented himself as a 'poet of rectitude,' not of 'arms'). Mario Fubini (“Inferno: canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera, dir. Mario Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1962)], pp. 999-1021) refers to this as the 'canto delle armi' in which Dante becomes 'il Bertram italiano' (p. 1005). A countering view is presented by Mazzotta (Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993], pp. 75-95), who sees this canto as Dante's 'farewell to arms.' Once could argue that, since Dante had never done poetry of a martial kind before, this is more like his 'hello.' Many years ago the director Sam Peckinpaugh was asked in an interview on television why there was so much insistent, close-up, slow-motion depiction of violence in his film The Wild Bunch. He replied that by so presenting it he had hoped to repel his audience, instilling in them a great dislike of such anti-social activity. Bill Russell, the Boston Celtics star center at the time, his interlocutor, was convincingly dubious both as to the intended effect and to the motives of Mr. Peckinpaugh. While Dante's position here would also seem to look down on 'mere' martial epic, with all its pointless slaughter, he nonetheless reveals an aptitude for the genre.
Puglia (Apulia) here, most commentators agree, is meant in its wider sense, i.e., not only the southeast portion of the Italian peninsula, but the region including Lazio. The Trojans are then Aeneas and his men (some believe the reference is to the later Romans). The 'long war' is the second Punic War (218-201 B.C.), during which the Romans suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of Hannibal's Carthaginian forces at Cannae (216 B.C.) in Apulia. Historians relate that after the battle an envoy of Hannibal showed the Carthaginian senate the vast number of gold rings taken from the fingers of noble Romans killed in the battle.
The problem of the extent of Dante's knowledge of Livy remains a vexed one. See Antonio Martina, 'Livio, Tito' (ED.1971.3), for a summary and bibliography through 1965 (especially important are the studies of Giuseppe Billanovich). Commentators point out that Dante here would rather seem to be following Orosius (or Augustine) than Livy, but still appeals to Livy as the most authoritative historian of Rome. His vast compendium, Ab urbe condita, did not come through the ages intact; precisely which parts of it were known to Dante is not known to us.
Robert Guiscard, a Norman, won many victories in Puglia ca. 1160-80 to consolidate his power as duke of the region, including what for Dante was the most important one, that over the Saracens, which apparently gained him his place in Paradiso XVIII.48.
The text alludes to Manfred's disastrous loss, occasioned, in Dante's view, by the betrayal of his Apulian allies, at the battle near Ceperano that was prologue to his final defeat and death at the hands of the forces of the French king Charles of Valois at the battle of Benevento (1266). Manfred is the first saved soul found once Dante begins his ascent of the mount of purgatory (Purg. III.112).
Two years after the defeat at Benevento, the Ghibelline Norman forces, now under Conradin, the grandson of the emperor Frederick II, suffered their final defeat near Tagliacozzo, in the Abruzzi, again at the hands of the forces of Charles of Anjou, who, after the battle, had Conradin put to death, thus ending the Angevin succession in Italy. Alardo was the French knight Érard de Valéry, who gave Charles the strategic advice that gained him military advantage on the field.
This image, suggesting layers of excavated battlefields, each containing vast areas of wounded soldiers holding out their mutilated limbs, gives us some sense of Dante's view of the end result of war, sheer human butchery. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to XXVIII.1-21) suggest that this bolgia brings into mind the image of a huge slaughterhouse.
For the Virgilian resonance (Aen. II.361-362) of these lines see, again, Tommaseo (comm. to these vv.). This is Aeneas's response when he must tell the terrible carnage during the night of the fall of Troy.
This disgusting image of Mohammed derives from Dante's conviction that the prophet was in fact a Christian whose schismatic behavior took the form of founding (in 630) what Dante considered a rival sect rather than a new religion, Islam. Thus Mohammed reveals himself as divided in two. For the earliest (and varied) responses to the presence of Mohammed in the poem, see Paola Locatin, “Maometto negli antichi commenti alla Commedia,” L'Alighieri 20 (2002), pp. 41-75.
Alì, disciple, cousin, and son-in-law of Mohammed, became the fourth leader of the Muslims. But the issues surrounding his succession in 656 divided them into two factions, Sunni and Shiite, that continue to this day.
All punished here are described by this verse. 'Scandal,' in this sense, means a promulgated doctrine that leads others to stumble and lose their way to the truth. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica II-II, q. 43, a. 1, resp., on the Greek word skandalon, or 'stumbling-block.' Thus all here either cause schism in others or themselves lead schismatic groups, the first three religious (Mohammed, Alì, Fra Dolcino), the last five political (Pier da Medicina, Malatestino, Curio, Mosca, Bertran de Born).
The unseen devil of this ditch joins the cast of devils of the Malebolge, the whippers of the first bolgia and the hookers of the fifth. In this case there seems to be one devil alone, perhaps intended to remind the reader of the solitary Cherub, with flaming sword, sent to guard the Garden after Adam and Eve had been ejected from it (Genesis 3:24). (See Purg. VIII.25-27, where this passage is more clearly alluded to.) It is only in Malebolge that we find such creatures.
Mohammed evidently believes that Dante is one of the dead sinners. But how or why he thinks that such as they can loiter in hell, doing a bit of sightseeing before they go to judgment, is not easily explained. Virgil's response (v. 49) makes it clear that only he, in this pair of visitors, is a dead soul.
Disabused of his erring view, Mohammed uses the occasion to send a message to his fellow in religious schism, Fra Dolcino. A northerner, from Novara (balancing the southern setting of the opening of the canto), Dolcino Tornielli was the head, from ca. 1300, of a group known as the Apostolic Brethren (gli Apostolici). This 'order' had as its aim the restoration of the simplicity of apostolic times to the Christian religion. Its enemies accused Dolcino of holding heretical ideas, such as the community of goods and women (see Oelsner, comm. to these verses). It did not help Dolcino's case that he was accompanied by a beautiful woman, Margaret of Trent, reputed to be his mistress. Pope Clement V preached a crusade against the Brethren in 1305. In 1307, starved out by their enemies in the high country to which they had retreated, the Brethren were captured. Margaret and Dolcino were burned at the stake.
Mohammed's placement of his suspended foot is read by some as a mere 'realistic detail.' Rasha Al-Sabah (“Inferno XXVIII: The Figure of Muhammad,” Yale Italian Studies 1 [1977], pp. 147-61) argues for an iconographic reading, based in a passage in St. Thomas on a passage in Proverbs (6:12-19), in which 'a wicked man with lying mouth, sewing discord,' has 'feet that are swift in running to mischief.' His posture, one foot suspended, may also refer to the Greek term (skandalon) for 'stumbling-block,' found at Inferno XXVIII.35.
This bloodied figure, thus sliced by the sword-wielding devil, will be revealed as Pier da Medicina at v. 73. For the reminiscence of Virgil's description of the disfigured visage of Deiphobus (Aen. VI.494-497), similarly deprived of his nose, see Scartazzini (comm. to XXVIII.64) and many later commentators.
Pier opens his windpipe to speak, since the devil's cut had wounded him there, thus preventing his breath from reaching his mouth.
The early commentators are not sure exactly who Pier of Medicina (a town between Bologna and Imola) was, but Dante and he apparently knew one another. While the nature of his schismatic behavior thus lies in shadow, the fact that his ensuing remarks refer to political intrigue would seem to mark him also as a political, rather than a religious, schismatic.
On verses 74-75 see Ignazio Baldelli, “'Lo dolce piano che da Vercelli a Marcabò dichina': Inferno XXVIII, 74-75,” Lettere Italiane 47 (1995), pp. 193-202.
Pier refers, in his prophecy, which parallels that given by Mohammed, initially to two victims of 'schism,' Guido del Cassero and Angiolello di Carignano, first identified by Guiniforto in 1440 (comm. to XXVIII.76-84), and then to the victimizer, Malatestino Malatesta, lord of Rimini. (He is referred to as 'the younger mastiff' in the last canto at Inf. XXVII.46.) The details are not known to any commentators, but apparently Dante knew that these two leaders of the city of Fano were tricked by Malatestino into coming to confer with him at the town of La Cattolica. His men caught them in their ship on their way (or after they left) and drowned them.
The passage has caused some dispute. Malatestino only came into.power in Rimini after the death of his father in 1312. This fact causes such as Petrocchi (“Intorno alla pubblicazione dell'Inferno e del Purgatorio,” Convivium 25 [1957], pp. 659-60) to argue that this is a second example of Dante's posterior revision of the text of the first cantica (see the note to Inf. XIX.79-87). However, and as Chiavacci Leonardi contends (Inferno, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1991], p. 845), the present tense for Malatestino's rulership is used, not by the poet, but by Pier da Medicina, and he is speaking in 1300. Two other things should also be noted: first, Malatestino was co-ruler of Rimini with his father, Malatesta, in 1295 or soon thereafter; second, the date of the incident referred to has never been established, since no commentator has any information about it. Still further, the reference to Malatestino in the previous canto has him functioning with his father in nefarious deeds ca. 1295. For at least these reasons there is no cause to believe that Dante is here referring to Malatestino's perfidy as occurring in 1312 or later.
Unriddled, the passage means that the entire Mediterranean Sea never witnessed so great a crime. For the phrase 'gente argolica,' meaning 'Greeks,' a synecdoche based on the part (the denizens of Argos) for the whole (Greece) see (Aen. II.78), as was noted by Torraca in 1905 (comm. to these verses).
Malatestino, one-eyed, holds Rimini, the city that Curio (v. 102) wishes he had never seen (because it was there that he offered the advice that condemns him to this punishment).
The two men of Fano (v. 76) will have no need of prayer for help against the tricky winds off Focara's point because they will be dead.
Dante, his appetite whetted by Pier's elliptical phrasing at v. 87, wants him to expand.
Pier opens the tongueless mouth of Curio, seen as a schismatic for his advice to Caesar to march on Rome, thus destroying the Republic and causing the civil wars. For Curio in Lucan and Dante, see Stull and Hollander, “The Lucanian Source of Dante's Ulysses,” Studi Danteschi 63 (1991 [1997]), pp. 27-28.
The description of Mosca dei Lamberti is one of the most affecting in this canto filled with affective moments. Mosca was among those Florentine citizens mentioned by Ciacco (Inf. VI.80) as having attempted to do good in the divided city; for his crime, of those mentioned he is the farthest down in hell. A fervent Ghibelline, in 1216 he urged the murder of Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti, who, engaged to a girl of the Amidei family, married a Donati instead. The result of this killing was the origin of the bitter rivalry between the Amidei and the Donati, Ghibellines and Guelphs respectively, and of the civil discord that tore Florence apart. Mosca is thus seen as a modern-day Curio, urging the powerful to do what in their hearts they must have known was not to be done.
His words, 'a done deed finds its purpose,' so mercilessly laconic, now cause him enough by way of regret that we can sense some justification in Ciacco's original characterization of him.
Dante is nonetheless stern in his criticism of Mosca, not accepting his gesture of penitence, and Mosca is left with his deserved heartbreak. There is no zest for the wicked in this poet.
The poet's self-assurance, playful though it certainly is, may offend some readers. He can narrate what is to follow because he knows he actually saw the next scene, a shade carrying his severed head. For the motif of the decapitated corpse see Paola Allegretti (“Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte [Inf.. XXVIII],” Tenzone 2 [2001], pp. 9-25), pp. 9-10.
Bertran de Born, one of the great poets of war of his or any time (and thus greatly admired by Ezra Pound in the last century) loved to see destruction of towns and men. One thinks of Robert Duvall's character in Francis Ford Coppolla's film Apocalyse Now, who loved the smell of napalm in the morning. His plangent tone, as he opens his remarks to Dante, would have bothered him considerably, had he been able to read this scene – and perhaps Dante thought exactly this himself, as he composed them. It is often pointed out that v. 132 is a reprise of a passage in the Lamentations of Jeremiah (1:12), already cited by Dante in the opening verses of an 'exploded' sonnet in (VN VII.3) to express his own solitary sadness in love. In a sense, they are part of Bertran's punishment, the 'tough guy' portrayed as self-pitying.
Bertran was a Gascon nobleman of the second half of the twelfth century. His poetry, which is reflected in several passages in this canto, is not the subject of his discourse. Rather, he condemns himself for his implacable schismatic actions at the English court, where he supported and encouraged the rebellious plotting of Prince Henry against his own father, Henry II, king of the realm. For a text that.1 encapsulates the problem presented in Bertran and all the other political schismatics, see Luke 11:17: 'Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation' (cited by Marianne Shapiro in “The Fictionalization of Bertran de Born [Inf. XXVIII],” Dante Studies 92 [1974], p. 114).
For the reference to Ahitophel's similar support and encouragement of Absalom's rebellion against his father, King David, see II Samuel 15:7-18:15).
On Bertran's poetry see Michelangelo Picone, “I trovatori di Dante: Bertran de Born,” Studi e problemi di critica testuale 19 (1979), pp. 71-94. For its resonance in the verses of this canto see Paola Allegretti (“Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte [Inf.. XXVIII],” Tenzone 2 [2001], pp. 9-18).
The word contrapasso is generally understood to be based on an Aristotelian term in its Latin translation, contrapassum, used in the same sense that the biblical concept of retribution, expressed in the Latin lex talionis (the taking of an eye for an eye, etc.), is understood to have. That is, one does something wrong and receives the appropriate punishment for doing it. Out of the Hebrew and Aristotelian concept (the latter refined by Thomas's commentary on Aristotle), Dante supposedly developed this idea, which is given a name here, but has been operative since we saw the first sinners in hell, the neutrals, in Canto III. For a lengthy and helpful gloss, see Singleton (comm. to this verse). Valerio Lucchesi (“Giustizia divina e linguaggio umano. Metafore e polisemie del contrapasso dantesco,” Studi Danteschi 63 [1991 (1997)], pp. 53-126) has mounted a complex argument attempting to deny this positive understanding of the term by Dante on the basis of its instability as a concept that St. Thomas actually embraces. For a thorough review of the entire question and of Dante's possible sources for the term (and understanding of them) see Peter Armour, “Dante's contrapasso: Context and Texts,” Italian Studies 55 (2000), pp. 1-20.
Commentary text is copyrighted and reproduced by permission.
Please enter a search term.
Copyright | © 2024 Trustees of Dartmouth College. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
