1–6. Who could ever … comprehend so much: Even if freed of the restrictions imposed by verse, the poet could not adequately contain in words (line 6) the scene he saw. This is the so-called inexpressibility topos (see Curtius 1953), based on such passages as Aen. 2. 361—62:
Quis cladem illius noctis, quis funera fando
explicet aut possit lacrimis aequare labores?
[Who by speaking could unfold the slaughter of that night
and its deaths, or equal its travails with his tears?]
and 6.625–27:
Non, mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum,
ferrea vox, omnis scelerum comprendere formas,
omnia poenarum percurrere nomina possim.
[Not if I had a hundred tongues and mouths,
a voice of iron, could I include all the forms of crime,
run through the names of all the punishments.]
Compare Statius, Theb. 12.797–99, which lists victims of the fratricidal Theban war.
1. unbound words: Prose (Latin oratio soluta, unbound speech) as opposed to verse, regulated by fixed numbers and rules; in the De vulgari eloquentia (2.5 and 2.8) Dante compared the lines of verse in a stanza to sticks of fixed length bound together in a bundle.
7–21. If one gathered … the ninth pocket: The multitude of “blood and wounds” in this bolgia exceeds the number of all those wounded and killed in the many wars fought in the south of Italy from Roman times until the battle of Tagliacozzo (1268). The rhetorical organization of these lines may be derived from the lament for the “young king” (Henry Plantagenet, second son of Henry II of England) attributed to Bertran de Born, lines 1–5:
Si tuit li dol el plor el marrimen
e las dolors el dan el caitivier
que horn anc auzis en est segle dolen
fosson ensems, sembleran tot leugier
contra la mort del joven rei engles.
[If all the pain and weeping and dismay
and anguish and harm and misery
that man ever had in this life of pain
were all together, they would seem light
next to the death of the young English king.]
Bertran himself appears in lines 118–42.
8. travailed earth of Apulia: Apulia refers here to the medieval kingdom of Naples, stretching from the “heel” and “toe” of Italy as far north as the Tronto and Garigliano rivers (near modern Ascoli and Gaeta).
10. Trojans: Of all the wars between the Trojans (the Romans, the descendants of Aeneas and his followers) and the Latin tribes for control over the Italian peninsula, one of the bloodiest was the Samnite War (280 B.C.), which involved the Greek mercenary Pyrrhus (see 12.135).
10–12. the long war … Livy writes: The second Punic, or Carthaginian, War (218–202 B.C.). The victory of Hannibal at Cannae (216 B.C.) marked Rome’s darkest hour in its long struggle with Carthage for domination of the Mediterranean. According to Livy (Ab urbe condita 22.44), Hannibal’s soldiers gleaned a bushel of rings from the corpses of the Roman dead; Orosius and Augustine give the amount as three bushels.
14. Robert Guiscard: Bom in Normandy in 1015, brother of its duke, Robert Guiscard (the surname means “sagacious” or “cunning”) was in 1059 offered Apulia and Calabria by Pope Nicholas II; he fought for twenty years to conquer them. He died suddenly of pestilence in July 1085. (Subsequently the titles of Apulia and Sicily were united in the person of his great-nephew, Roger I, first of the Norman kings of the Two Sicilies.)
16. at Ceperano … was a liar: Frederick II’s natural son, Manfred, was defeated at Benevento in 1266 by Charles of Anjou, engaged by the pope to establish Guelf supremacy in central and southern Italy. According to Dante’s information, the battle was lost because of the desertion of the Apulian barons, who failed to hold positions near the pass of Ceperano, on the Liris river; Manfred was killed on the field (see Purg. 3.112 and notes).
17. Tagliacozzo … without arms: After Manfred’s defeat, the Ghibelline cause was championed by Frederick’s legitimate grandson Conradino, defeated by Charles of Anjou at Tagliacozzo, in the rugged Abbruzzi region northeast of Naples. The battle was very bloody, but Conradino was tricked by the French general Elard de Valéry, who thus won “without arms”—that is, by tactics.
22–63. Surely a barrel … he set it down: The interview with Mohammed is the longest in the canto. Dante accepted the medieval Christian claim that Mohammed had originally been a Christian; he treats him as a schismatic.
22–24. Surely a barrel … to the farting-place: Note the image of the broken container. In this canto, Dante repeatedly echoes the famous poet of the joy of battle, Bertran de Born. Compare Bertran’s “Bern plai lo gais temps de pascor” [Well-pleased I am by gay Eastertime], on bodies and fortifications cleft and riven: “qan vei fortz chastels assetgatz/ els barris rotz et esfondratz” [when I see strong castles besieged and the outer walls broken and breached]. Bertran’s language itself echoes the formulas for the savage wounds sustained in shock combat found in the Old French chansons de geste (Bertran 1986), especially the Song of Roland, which Dante probably read in thirteenth-century rhymed Venetian versions.
25–27. Between his legs … what is swallowed: The “pluck” (corata) is the lungs, heart, and other organs above the diaphragm; the “bag” is usually taken to mean the stomach. Mahomet’s pendant intestines are suggestive of the Malebolge itself. See Additional Note 13.
29–31. with his hands … torn open: Italian dilaccare [to spread] was idiomatically used for the spreading of the thighs (cf. lacca [hollow, slope]; 7.16 and 12.11). This display of wounds parodies the iconography of Christ’s wounds at the Last Judgment. Note the parallel between the gaping physical wounds and the gaping and staring of both the pilgrim and the punished schismatics (see lines 53–54 and 29.1–3).
31. Mohammed: In the Christian polemics that were Dante’s sources of information, Mohammed was said to have been a Nestorian Christian (the Nestorians denied that Christ’s divine and human natures were united) before founding Islam; thus he was thought both a heretic and a schismatic, having drawn one third of the world’s believers away from the true faith.
32–33. Ali… his face cloven from chin to forelock: Ali was Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law. His wound suggests completion of the splitting of the body begun with the vertical slash on Mohammed; it may conceivably refer to the splitting of Islam into Sunnites and Shiites.
35. sowers of scandal and schism: Scandal (Greek skándalon, stumbling-block) trips others into sin (Aquinas, Summa theol. 2a 2ae, q. 5, a. 2; and see Augustine, City of God 20.5); schism, according to Aquinas, is the division (scissura) of the faithful by those professing to be believers. The metaphor of sowing derives from the parable of the tares in Matt. 13.24–30, 36–43 (see also lines 68, 94, 101, and 108). For the distinction between heresy and schism, see the note to 9.127–28. For the close relation between the metaphors of the body of Christ and the body politic, see Additional Note 2.
37. carves us: Dante’s word accismar meant literally “to prepare” or “to equip”; he knew it in Bertran’s “Be.m plai” (26–28): “And once the battle is joined,/ each must be prepared [acesmatz]/ to follow his lord willingly.”
38–39. putting the edge … in this ream: Italian taglio means literally “cutting” or “slicing.” Compare with Bertran, “Un sirventes,” line 40: “sabra de mon bran cum talha” [they shall know how my sword can cut] and line 43: “Tot jorn resoli e retaill/ los baros” [All day I resole and reslice the barons]. In this canto where Dante makes explicit a theory of retributive punishment (see line 142), it is logical that the agent of justice (here, a devil) bear a sword: images closely contemporary with Dante (Giotto, Ambrogio Lorenzetti) show the sword as the instrument of justice. Pietro di Dante comments: “as they divided others with the word, here they themselves are now divided.”
39. in this ream: A ream is a quantity of cut paper; Dante’s word risma derives perhaps from rame, a brass device for cutting paper; risma is also a variant ofrima [rhyme or verse], from Latin rithimus, associated with Gallo-Romance rimar [to put in a row; rive, split]. See Additional Note 12.
44. perhaps to delay … on your crimes: With increasing frequency in lower Hell, the pilgrim is assumed to be one of the damned. For this emphasis on the decree of punishment, see line 142, with note.
55–60. Now then, you … would not be easy: The charismatic Dolcino de’ Tornielli, from near Novara, became the leader of the “Apostolic Brethren” after Gherardo Segarelli, their founder, was burned at the stake (1300). In 1305 Clement V ordered a crusade, recruited mainly from Novara (line 59) and Vercelli; from camps high in the mountains, the Brethren resisted until starvation forced them to a pitched battle in March 1307. Dolcino and his companion, Margaret of Trent, were captured; Dolcino’s body was cruelly mutilated before he was burned at the stake at Vercelli in June 1307.
Although the Apostolic Brethren were branded as heretics by the Church, Dante places them among the schismatics; he seems to have shared most of Dolcino’s doctrines in some form (Dolcino condemned the papacy and preached renewal of the Church under an emperor and a saintly pope). Apparently Dante condemns Dolcino and has him advised by Mohammed because of his leading a separate group, which makes him a schismatic, and his armed resistance to the crusaders. Eco (1980, trans. 1983) imaginatively evokes the period; Orioli (1988) offers a recent sifting of the evidence.
55–58. Now … with enough food: Because of Dante’s use of inversion and hypallage (suspended constructions), these lines have had to be rearranged; the original order is: “Now tell Brother Dolcino that he arm himself, you who … if… , with enough… .” Two clauses stand between s’armi, ”provide [literally, arm] himself” in line 55 and vivanda [food] in line 58.
61–63. Holding one foot … set it down: Again a gap in what is normally unified (see lines 55—58): walking has been suspended, like the constructions of lines 55–58; compare Aen. 6.546–47: “I, decus, i, nostrum; melioribus utere fatis./Tantum effatus, et in verbo vestigia torsit.” [Go, our glory, go: know better fates. This much said, while speaking he turned his steps.]
64–66. Another, whose throat … only one ear: The mutilation of Pier da Medicina recalls that of Deiphobus; see Aen. 6.494—97:
Atque hie Priamiden laniatum corpore toto
Deiphobum vidit, lacerum crudeliter ora,
ora manusque ambas, populataque tempora raptis
auribus et truncas inhonesto vulnere naris.
[But here, with his whole body torn, he saw Priam’s son
Deiphobus, and his cruelly lacerated face,
his lips and both his hands, his ears shorn
from his ravaged temples and his nose cut short with shameful wounds.]
(Having married Helen after the death of Paris, Deiphobus was betrayed by her and caught unarmed when Troy fell.)
68. opened his windpipe: Like Pier della Vigna, this soul speaks through his wound; the focus is on the act of speech as causing strife (see lines 35, 94, and 107, with notes).
73. remember Pier of Medicina: Piero di Aimo da Medicina is the leading candidate among several like-named members, about whom little is known, of the house of Medicina, a large village between Imola and Bologna. Benvenuto states that he sowed discord between the Malatesta and Polenta families (see 27.41, 46) by telling each inflammatory stories about the other.
74–75. the lovely plain … Marcabo: This plain is the entire valley of the Po, from Vercelli in the west to near Ravenna.
79–80. thrown … and drowned: Italian mazzerare is derived from mazzera [bundle of stones attached to fishing nets]; compare Matt. 18.6: “it were better for him [whoever scandalizes the innocent] that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
80. Cattolica: Site of a lighthouse overlooking the stretch of the seacoast of the March of Ancona where Guido del Cassero and Angiolello da Carignano, high-ranking nobles of Fano, were drowned.
82–84. Between the islands … not by Argolians: The islands of Cyprus in the eastern and Majorca in the western Mediterranean were well known to Florentines, who kept trading offices in both places. For “Argolians” meaning “Greeks,” see Sinon’s words in Aen. 2.78: “neque me Argolica de gente negabo” [nor do I deny that I am of the Argolian people], and see 30.98–129, with notes. Note the repeated geographic panoramas.
85. That traitor … only one eye: Malatestino’s face, slashed by a sword cut and lacking one eye, seems to hint of future damnation to this bolgia. Christian accounts had it that Mohammed’s face was also scarred by sword cuts.
86–87. the city … still to see: Rimini (see the note to line 99).
89–90. he will bring it about … against the Focara wind: The currents and winds near Cattolica were dangerous, hence prayers were often made for protection against the wind from Focara. Guido and Angiolello will need no prayers because they will be drowned.
93. the one of the bitter sight: The one mentioned in line 87.
94–95. he put his hand … opened his mouth: The gesture emphasizes speech as the source of discord (see lines 35 and 68, with notes). Curio was known for his venality and his glib tongue (lines 100–101); see Pharsalia 1.269: “Audax venali … Curio lingua” [Curio, bold with his venal tongue]. Piero’s sarcasm echoes Lucan’s moralizing over Curio’s death (4.801–4): “quid prodita iura senatus/ et gener atque socer bello concurrere iussi?” [what good came to him from betraying the Senate’s laws and sending Pompey and Caesar to clash in arms?].
97. an exile: Like Caesar, once having defied the Senate Curio was an exile (Pharsalia 1.278–79); technically this did not occur until Caesar had crossed the Rubicon.
99. one prepared always suffers from delay: The words Curio spoke to persuade Caesar to cross the Rubicon at Rimini and thus begin the civil war is one of the most famous sententiae, or sayings, from Lucan’s poem, often quoted in the Middle Ages (Pharsalia 1.280–81): “tolle moras; semper nocuit diferre paratis” [do not delay: waiting always harms those who are ready] (see Dante, Epistle 7.5).
103. both hands cut off: Mutilation of the “executive” limbs of the body. In the Song of Roland, Roland is the “right arm” of Charlemagne, “le destre braz del cors” (laisse 45.2), a traditional relation between soldier and captain. The mutilated hands here balance the awkward walking of lines 61—63, coordinating the extremities.
106. Mosca: Mosca is the last of the five Florentines mentioned by the pilgrim to Ciacco (6.79—80) as having bent themselves to “well-doing”; he was of the Ghibelline Lamberti family, allied to the more powerful Amidei. Villani tells of how Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti, betrothed to one of the Amidei, rejected her when offered a more appealing candidate; the Amidei, with the Lamberti and other families, urged by Mosca, decided on revenge. On Easter Sunday, 1215, Buondelmonte was dragged from his horse and stabbed to death next to the statue of Mars at the head of the Ponte Vecchio (see 13.143–51). The old chroniclers see this murder as the origin of the division of the city into Guelf and Ghibelline factions, the “beginning of its destruction.”
107. A thing done is done: Literally, “a thing done has a head” (a cap, or conclusion); in short, kill him (Dino Compagni, Cronica 1.2.20).
108. the seed of evil for the Tuscans: Mosca’s words, rather than ending the problem, unleashed violence: the capo was not an end of shame, but a beginning of division. For words as seeds, see lines 35, 68, 94, and 101.
109. And the death of your clan: The pilgrim caps Mosca’s advice, and invokes the end, the cap, put on his kindred. In fact, the influence of the Lamberti soon waned; in 1258 they were expelled from Florence for violence.
112- 42. But I remained … the counter-suffering: The last example of the sowing of strife is Bertran de Born, allusions to whose poetry have provided a kind of subtext for the canto; after the interview with Mohammed, this is the longest in the bolgia, and it provides a particularly striking conclusion.
113- 17. I saw … knowing itself pure: Again, the poet’s proof is that he “saw it”; he bears witness (see lines 1–6, 51, 71–72, and the notes to 16.124–29). Otfried Lieberknecht, in an Internet posting, cites 2 Cor. 1.12.
117. the hauberk of knowing itself pure: It is the conscience that knows itself pure—that is, blameless. Dante is adapting Saint Paul’s “breastplate of justice” (Eph. 6.14) to the terminology of medieval weapons (chain mail) (cf. Saint Paul’s source, Is. 59.17).
119–26. a torso … who so disposes: Like Mohammed’s exposure of his wounds, Bertran’s holding his own head parodies a type of Christian martyr: the cephalophore, who when decapitated picks up his own head and walks to his burial place (e.g., San Miniato, whose church sits above Florence; see Purg. 12.102).
121–22. holding … like a lantern: In classical epic, the severed head held aloft is a gesture of triumph (see Aen. 9.466; Statius, Tlteb. 9.132 and 10.452; and, of course, Perseus holding the head of Medusa).
123. Oh me: In the Italian, a rare example oirimafranta, one rhyme combining two words; Dante may be imitating Bertran, who uses one in “Be.m plai” (quoted in the note to line 37): “to eat, drink, or sleep is not so savory as the moment I hear both sides crying ’at ’em’ [a lor].” See Additional Note 12. For another, see 7.28: pur li, rhymed with urli and burli.
125. two in one and one in two: See 25.61 and note.
128–29. he raised … close to us: Bertran’s head is both a lantern (it sees) and a vocal conduit. A literal instance of “broken speech,” since Bertran’s breath is separated from its source in the lungs. For the eye as a lantern, see Matt. 6.23: “if thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be darksome”; compare Matt. 5.29—30, on amputating members that “scandalize” one (eye and hand).
130–32. Now see … if any is great as this: See Lam. 1.12: “O all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow.” The words are spoken by the personified city ofjerusalem (see the note to 30.58—61).
131. you who go still breathing: Dante again reminds us that the pilgrim is breathing; breath is the physical image of the spirit that unifies the body. Breathing, the pilgrim distinguishes himself from the sowers of discord, who rend the unity of personal, civic, and mystical bodies.
134. Bertran de Born: Born about 1140, Bertran was lord of Hautefort, a casde in the Perigord whose ownership he disputed with his brother, whom he displaced (according to one of his biographies, through treachery). He died about 1215, a monk at the Cistercian monastery of Dalon, near Hautefort. Dante drew his information regarding Bertran’s life and politics from the often fictionalized biographies, or vidas, of the troubadours composed in Italy in the thirteenth century. In the De vulgari eloquentia (2.2.9), Dante calls Bertran the preeminent poet of arms in Provençal.
135. the young king: The second son of Henry II of England (1155–1183; his older brother died at age two). He was called the young king because Henry II had him crowned in 1170 and again in 1172. Young Henry’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the French king, Louis VII, backed his demand that a substantial part of his patrimony be turned over to him. The resultant conflict among the young king, his father, and his brothers Richard and John lasted until the young king’s death in 1183. His death was much lamented, perhaps less on account of his virtues than his prodigal, indeed ruinous, liberality. Some commentators have confused him with Henry II’s grandson, Henry III (r. 1216–1272).
136. I made father … each other: One of the Provençal lives of Bertran reads:
Always he wished them to have war with each other, the father and the son and the brother, each with the other … and if they made peace or called a truce, then he strove to pummel them with his satires so that they would undo the peace. (Hill and Bergin)
137–38. Achitophel… his evil proddings: Achitophel, counselor to King David and his son Absalom, fostered the son’s sedition against his father; it resulted in Absalom’s death (2 Samuel [Vulgate 2 Kings] 15.7—18.15). In the Latin chronicle by William of Newburgh (1170—1220), young Henry is called “the undutiful Absalom” (2.27). The tongue serves as goad again (see the note to 27.5).
142. the counter-suffering: ”Counter-suffering” translates the Latin contrapassum, a rendition of the Greek to antipeponthbn in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 5.5.1132b, part of a discussion of retaliation as a form of justice. Aquinas uses the term for the biblical law of retribution (lex talionis) : Summa theol. 2a 2ae, q. 61, a. 4: “I answer that counter-suffering [contrapassum] denotes equal suffering repaid for previous action … this kind of justice is laid down in the Law (Ex. 21.23, 24): ’He shall render life for life, eye for eye.’” See also Deut. 19.21, Lev. 24.20, and Matt. 5.38, 7.2.
Cleft horizontally, Bertran at the end of the canto balances the vertically cleft Ali (son-in-law, head) and Mohammed (father, body) at the beginning; there is a “harmony” of cuts and slashes, of religious schism paired with secular.
The souls in this bolgia suffer punishments that correspond to the effects their sins have had on the body politic; thus they are figures of the body politic individually as well as collectively. This is made explicit by Bertran de Born when he says that his decapitation is the contrapasso for having sown discord between father and son; he speaks of his trunk as the “origin” of his head. This unexpected phrase calls attention to the special complexity of both his sin and its punishment. Henry II was both the father, the origin, of the young king and the head of the state and the family; his son was part of the body that should have been subject to Henry II, but also the future head of the state; Bertran’s encouragements caused the young king to rebel, thus making illegitimate “head” against his father and ultimately aborting his rightful reign. In parting “persons so joined,” Bertran doubly sinned against both the head and the trunk of the body politic.