Such I became as those that, not comprehending that which is
replied to them, stand as if mocked, and know not what to answer.

Then Virgil said, "Tell him quickly, I am not he, I am not he
thou thinkest." And I answered as was enjoined on me; whereat the
spirit quite twisted his feet. Thereafter, sighing and with
tearful voice, he said to me, "Then what dost thou require of me?
If to know who I am concerneth thee so much that thou hast
crossed the bank therefor, know that I was vested with the Great
Mantle; and verily I was a son of the She-Bear,[1] so eager to
advance the cubs, that up there I put wealth, and here myself,
into the purse. Beneath my head are stretched the others that
preceded me in simony, flattened through the fissures of the
rock. There below shall I likewise sink, when he shall come whom
I believed thou wert, then when I put to thee the sudden
question; but already the time is longer that I have cooked my
feet, and that I have been thus upside down, than he will stay
planted with red feet; for after him will come, of uglier deed,
from westward, a shepherd without law,[2] such as must cover him
and me again. A new Jason will he be, of whom it is read in
Maccabees;[3] and as to that one his king was compliant, so unto
this he who rules France shall be."[4]

[1] Nicholas was of the Orsini family.

[2] Clement V., who will come from Avignon, and in a little more
than ten years after the death of Boniface. Nicholas had already
"cooked his feet" for twenty years. The prophecy of the death of
Clement after a shorter time affords an indication that this
canto was not written until after 1314, the year of his death.

[3] The story of Jason, "that ungodly wretch and no high-priest"
who bought the high-priesthood from King Antiochus, is told in 2
Maccabees iv. Its application to the Pope was plain.

[4] "He who rules France" was Philip the Fair.


I know not if here I was too audacious that I only answered him
in this strain, "Pray now tell me how much treasure our Lord
desired of Saint Peter before he placed the keys in his keeping?
Surely he required nothing save 'Follow me.' Nor did Peter or the
others require of Matthias gold or silver, when he was chosen to
the place which the guilty soul had lost. Therefore stay thou,
for thou art rightly punished, and guard well the ill-gotten
money that against Charles[1] made thee to be bold. And were it
not that reverence for the Supreme Keys that thou heldest in the
glad life still forbiddeth me, I would use words still more
grave; for your avarice saddens the world, trampling down the
good and exalting the bad. Of you shepherds the Evangelist was
aware, when she that sitteth upon the waters was seen by him to
fornicate with kings: that woman that was born with the seven
heads, and from the ten horns had evidence, so long as virtue
pleased her spouse.[2] Ye have made you a god of gold and silver:
and what difference is there between you and the idolater save
that he worships one and ye a hundred? Ah Constantine! of how
much ill was mother, not thy conversion, but that dowry which the
first rich Father received from thee!"[3]

[1] Charles of Anjou, of whom Nicholas III, was the enemy. He was
charged with having been bribed to support the attempt to expel
the French from Sicily, which began with the Sicilian Vespers in
1282.

[2] Dante deals freely with the figures of the Apocalypse:
Revelation vii. The woman here stands for the Church; her seven
heads may be interpreted as the Seven Sacraments, and her ten
horns as the Commandments; her spouse is the Pope.

[3] The reference is to the so-called Donation of Constantine,
the reality of which was generally accepted till long after
Dante's time.


And, while I was singing these notes to him, whether anger or
conscience stung him, he violently quivered with both feet. I
believe, forsooth, that it had pleased my Leader, with so
contented look be listened ever to the sound of the true words
uttered. Thereupon with both his arms he took me, and when he had
me wholly on his breast, remounted on the way by which he had
descended. Nor did he tire of holding me clasped till he had
borne me up to the summit of the arch which is the passage from
the fourth to the fifth dyke. Here softly he laid down his
burden, softly because of the ragged and steep crag, that would
be a difficult pass for goats. Thence another great valley was
discovered to me.



CANTO XX. Eighth Circle: fourth pit: diviners, soothsayers, and
magicians.--Amphiaraus.--Tiresias.--Aruns.--Manto.--Eurypylus.--
Michael Scott.--Asdente.

Of a new punishment needs must I make verses, and give matetial
to the twentieth canto of the first lay, which is of the
submerged.[1]

[1] Plunged into the misery of Hell.


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