planted a monastery), to the number of thusiast or impostor more properly bethirteen, came to the Pope in old and longs to that extraordinary man. Had torn garments, with dishevelled hair and I been intimately conversant with the unshorn beards, and with tears in their son of Abdallah, the task would still be eyes; and on being introduced to the difficult, and the success uncertain ; at presence of his Holiness, they feli at his the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly feet, and laid a complaint that the Em- contemplate his shade through a cloud of peror had ejected them from their house religious incense; and could I truly deliat Monte Cassino. This mountain was neate the portrait of an hour, the fleetimpregnable, and indeed inaccessible to ing resemblance would not equally apply any one unless at the will of the monks to the solitary of Mount Hera, to the and others who dwelt on it; however, R. preacher of Mecca, and to the conqueror Guiscard, by a device, pretending that of Arabia. From enthusiasm he was dead and being carried thither on to imposture the step is perilous and a bier, thus took possession of the monks' slippery; the dæmon of Socrates af castle. When the Pope heard this, he fords a memorable instance how a wise concealed his grief, and asked the reason; man may deceive himself, how a good to which the monks replied, 'Because, in man may deceive others, how the conobedience to you, we excommunicated science may slumber in a mixed and the Emperor. The Pope then said, middle state between self-illusion and 'Your obedience shall save you;' on voluntary fraud." which the monks went away without receiving anything more from the Pope." 16. The battle of Ceperano, near Monte Cassino, was fought in 1265, between Charles of Anjou and Manfred, king of Apulia and Sicily. The Apu-ligious sayings; and every antagonist, in lians, seeing the battle going against them, deserted their king and passed over to the enemy. 17. The battle of Tagliacozzo in Abruzzo was fought in 1268, between Charles of Anjou and Curradino or Conradin, nephew of Manfred. Charles gained the victory by the strategy of Count Alardo di Valleri, who, "weaponless himself, Made arms ridiculous." This valiant but wary crusader persuaded the king to keep a third of his forces in reserve; and when the soldiers of Curradino, thinking they had won the day, were scattered over the field in pursuit cf plunder, Charles fell upon them, and routed them. Of Ali, the son-in-law and faithful follower of Mahomet, he goes on to say: "He united the qualifications of a poet, a soldier, and a saint; his wisdom still breathes in a collection of moral and re the combats of the tongue or of the sword, was subdued by his eloquence and valour. From the first hour of his mission to the last rites of his funeral, the apostle was never forsaken by a generous friend, whom he delighted to name his brother, his vicegerent, and the faithful Aaron of a second Moses." 55. Fra Dolcino was one of the early social and religious reformers in the North of Italy. His sect bore the name of "Apostles," and its chief, if not only, heresy was a desire to bring back the Church to the simplicity of the apostolic times. In 1305 he withdrew with his followers to the mountains overlooking the Val Sesia in Piedmont, where he was pursued and besieged by the Church party, and, after various fortunes of vicAlardo is mentioned in the Cento No-tory and defeat, being reduced by stress velle Antiche, Nov. LVII., as "celebrated of snow" and famine, was taken prisoner, for his wonderful prowess even among the together with his companion, the beau chief nobles, and no less esteemed for his tiful Margaret of Trent. Both were singular virtues than for his courage." burned at Vercelli on the 1st of June, 1307. This last act of the tragedy is thus described by Mr. Mariotti, Historical Memoir of Fra Dolcino and hus Times, p. 290: 31. Gibbon, Ch. L., says: "At the conclusion of the Life of Mahomet, it may perhaps be expected that I should balance his faults and virtues, that I should decide whether the title of en-¡ 46 "Margaret of Trent enjoyed the pre cedence due to her sex. She was first led out into a spot near Vercelli, bearing the name of Arena Servi,' or more properly Arena Cervi,' in the sands, that is, of the torrent Cervo, which has its confluent with the Sesia at about one mile above the city. A high stake had been erected in conspicuous part of the place. To this she was fastened, and a pile of wood was reared at her feet. The eyes of the inhabitants of town and country were upon her. On her also were the eyes of Dolcino. She was burnt alive with slow fire. "Next came the turn of Dolcino: he was seated high on a car drawn by oxen, and thus paraded from street to street all over Vercelli. His tormentors were all around him. Beside the car, iron pots were carried, filled with burning charcoals; deep in the charcoals were iron pincers, glowing at white heat. These pincers were continually applied to the various parts of Dolcino's naked body, all along his progress, till all his flesh was torn piecemeal from his limbs: when every bone was bare and the whole town was perambulated, they drove the still living carcass back to the same arena, and threw it on the burning mass in which Margaret had been consumed." Farther on he adds: "Divested of all fables which ignorance, prejudice, or open calumny involved it in, Dolcino's scheme amounted to nothing more than a reformation, not of religion, but of the Church; his aim was merely the destruction of the temporal power of the clergy, and he died for his country no less than for his God. The wealth, arrogance, and corruption of the Papal See appeared to him, as it appeared to Dante, as it appeared to a thousand other patriots before and after him, an eternal hindrance to the union, peace, and welfare of Italy, as it was a perpetual check upon the progress of the human race, and a source of infinite scandal to the piety of earnest believers. utter his name without an imprecation, we have reason to be astonished at the little we find in it that may be construed into a wilful deviation from the strictest orthodoxy. Luther and Calvin would equally have repudiated him. He was neither a Presbyterian nor an Episcopalian, but an uncompromising, stanch Papist. His was, most eminently, the heresy of those whom we have designated as literal Christians.' He would have the Gospel strictly-perhaps blindlyadhered to. Neither was that, in the abstract, an unpardonable offence in the eyes of the Romanism of those timeswitness St. Francis and his early flockprovided he had limited himself to make Gospel-law binding upon himself and his followers only. But Dolcino must needs enforce it upon the whole Christian community, enforce it especially on those who set up as teachers of the Gospel, on those who laid claim to Apostolical succession. That was the error that damned him.” Of Margaret he still further says, referring to some old manuscript as authority: "She was known by the emphatic appellation of Margaret the Beautiful. It is added, that she was an orphan, heiress of noble parents, and had been placed for her education in a monastery of St. Catherine in Trent; that there Dolcino - who had also been a monk, or at least a novice, in a convent of the Order of the Humiliati, in the same town, and had been expelled in consequence either of his heretic tenets, or of immoral conduct-succeeded, nevertheless, in becoming domesticated in the nunnery of St. Catherine, as a steward or agent to the nuns, and there accomplished the fascination and abduction of the wealthy heiress.' 59. Val Sesia, among whose mountains Fra Dolcino was taken prisoner, is in the diocese of Novara. 73. A Bolognese, who stirred up dissensions among the citizens. 74. The plain of Lombardy sloping down two hundred miles and more, from Vercelli in Piedmont to Marcabo, a village near Ravenna. "To this clear mission of Italian Protestantism Dolcino was true throughout. If we bring the light of even the clumsiest criticism to bear on his creed, even such 76. Guido del Cassero and Angioas it has been summed up by the igno-lello da Cagnano, two honourable citizens sance or malignity of men who never of Fano, going to Rimini by invitation way; When fair occasion calls, 'tis fatal to delay." 106. Mosca degl' Uberti, or dei Lamberti, who, by advising the murder of Buondelmonte, gave rise to the parties of Guelf and Ghibelline, which so long divided Florence. See Canto X. Note 51. 134. Bertrand de Born, the turbulent Troubadour of the last half of the twelfth century, was alike skilful with his pen and his sword, and passed his life in alternately singing and fighting, and in stirring up dissension and strife among his neighbours. He is the author of that spirited war-song, well known to all readers of Troubadour verse, beginning "The beautiful spring delights me well, When flowers and leaves are growing; And it pleases my heart to hear the swell Of the birds' sweet chorus flowing In the echoing wood; And I love to see, all scattered around, Pavilions and tents on the martial ground; And my spirit finds it good, To see, on the level plains beyond, Gay knights and steeds caparison'd; "— and ending with a challenge to Richard Coeur de Lion, telling his minstrel Papiol to go "And tell the Lord of 'Yes and No' That peace already too long has been." "Bertrand de Born," says the old Provençal biography, published by Raynouard, Choix de Poésies Originales des Troubadours, V. 76, "was a chatelain of the bishopric of Périgueux, Viscount of Hautefort, a castle with nearly a thousand retainers. He had a brother, and would have dispossessed him of his inheritance, had it not been for the King of England. He was always at war with all his neighbours, with the Count of Périgueux, and with the Viscount of Limoges, and with his brother Constantine, and with Richard, when he was Count of Poitou. He was a good cavalier, and a good warrior, and a good lover, and a good troubadour ; and well informed and well spoken; and knew well how to bear good and evil fortune. Whenever he wished, he was master of King Henry of England and of his son; but always desired that father and son should be at war with each other, and one brother with the other. And he always wished that the King of France and the King of England should be at variance; and if there were either peace or truce, straightway he sought and endeavoured by his satires to undo the peace, and to show how each was dishonoured by it. And he had great advantages and great misfortunes by thus exciting feuds between them. He wrote many satires, but only two songs. Giraud de Borneil the wives of Bertrand King of Aragon called the songs of de Born's satires. And he who sang for him bore the name of Papiol. And he was handsome and courteous ; and called the Count of Britany, Rassa; and the King of England, Yes and No; and his son, the young king, Marinier. And he set his whole heart on fomenting war; and embroiled the father and son of England, until the young king was killed by an arrow in a castle of Bertrand de Born. The "And Bertrand used to boast that he had more wits than he needed. And when the King took him prisoner, he asked him, 'Have you all your wits, for you will need them now?' And he answered, 'I lost them all when the young king died.' Then the king wept, and pardoned him, and gave him robes, and lands, and honours. And he lived long and became a Cistercian against him. They were, Henry, surmonk." Fauriel, Histoire de la Poésie Provençale, Adler's Tr., p. 483, quoting part of this passage, adds: named Curt-Mantle, and called by the Troubadours and novelists of his time "The Young King," because he was crowned during his father's life; Richard "In this notice the old biographer Cœur-de-Lion, Count of Guienne and indicates the dominant trait of Bertrand's Poitou; Geoffroy, Duke of Brittany; character very distinctly; it was an un- and John Lackland. Henry was the bridled passion for war. He loved it only one of these who bore the title of not only as the occasion for exhibiting king at the time in question. Bertrand proofs of valour, for acquiring power, de Born was on terms of intimacy with and for winning glory, but also, and even him, and speaks of him in his poems more, on account of its hazards, on ac- as lo Reys joves, sometimes lauding and count of the exaltation of courage and of sometimes reproving him. One of the life which it produced, nay, even for the best of these poems is his Complainte, sake of the tumult, the disorders, and on the death of Henry, which took place the evils which are accustomed to follow in 1183, from disease, say some accounts, in its train. Bertrand de Born is the from the bolt of a crossbow say others. ideal of the undisciplined and adventure- He complains that he has lost "the best some warrior of the Middle Age, rather king that was ever born of mother," and than that of the chevalier in the proper goes on to say, King of the courteous, sense of the term. and emperor of the valiant, you would See also Millot, Hist. Litt. des Trou-have been Seigneur if you had lived badours, I. 210, and Hist. Litt. de la France par les Bénédictins de St. Maur, continuation, XVII. 425. 66 longer; for you bore the name of the Young King, and were the chief and peer of youth. Ay! hauberk and sword, and beautiful buckler, helmet and gonfalon, and purpoint and sark, and joy and love, there is none to maintain them!" See Raynouard, Choix de Poésies, IV. 49. Bertrand de Born, if not the best of the Troubadours, is the most prominent and striking character among them. His life is a drama full of romantic interest; beginning with the old castle in Gascony," the dames, the cavaliers, the arms, the loves, the courtesy, the bold emprise ;" and ending in a Čister-is spoken of as cian convent, among friars and fastings, and penitence and prayers. In the Bible Guiot de Provins, Barbazan, Fabliaux et Contes, II., 518, he "li jones Rois, Li proux, li saiges, li cortois." It was to him that Bertrand de Born " gave the evil counsels," embroiling him with his father and his brothers. Therefore, when the commentators challenge us as Pistol does Shallow, "Under which king, Bezonian ? speak or die!" I think we must answer as Shallow does, "Under King Harry.' 135. A vast majority of manuscripts In the Cento Novelle Antiche, XVIII., and printed editions read in this line, XIX., XXXV., he is called il Re GioRe Giovanni, King John, instead of Revane; and in Roger de Wendover's Giovane, the Young King. Even Boc- Flowers of History, A.D. 1179–1183, caccio's copy, which he wrote out with "Henry the Young King." his own hand for Petrarca, has Re Giovarni. Out of seventy-nine Codici examined by Barlow, he says, Study of the Divina Commedia, p. 153, "Only five were found with the correct reading -re giovane. The reading re giovane is not found in any of the early editions, nor is it noticed by any of the early commentators." See also Ginguené, Hist. Litt. de l'Italie, II. 586, where the subject is elaborately discussed, and the note of Biagioli, who takes the opposite side of the question. Henry II. of England had four sons, all of whom were more or less rebellious 137. See 2 Samuel xvii. 1, 2 : Moreover, Ahithophel said unto Absalom, let me now choose out twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after David this night. And I will come upon him while he is weary and weak-handed, and will make him afraid : His 27. Geri del Bello was a disreputable member of the Alighieri family, and was murdered by one of the Sacchetti. death was afterwards avenged by his brother, who in turn slew one of the Sacchetti at the door of his house. 29. Bertrand de Born. 35. Like the ghost of Ajax in the Odyssey, XI. "He answered me not at all, but went to Erebus amongst the other souls of the dead." 36. Dante seems to share the feeling of the Italian vendetta, which required retaliation from some member of the injured family. "Among the Italians of this age," says Napier, Florentine Hist, I. Ch. VII., "and for centuries after, private offence was never forgotten until revenged, and generally involved a suc cession of mutual injuries; vengeance was not only considered lawful and just, but a positive duty, dishonourable to omit; and, as may be learned from ancient private journals, it was sometimes allowed to sleep for five-andthirty years, and then suddenly struck a victim who perhaps had not yet seen the light when the original injury was inflicted." 46. The Val di Chiana, near Arezzo, was in Dante's time marshy and pestilential. Now, by the effect of drainage, it is one of the most beautiful and fruitful of the Tuscan valleys. The Maremma was and is notoriously unhealthy; see Canto XIII. Note 9, and Sardinia would seem to have shared its ill repute. 57. Forgers or falsifiers in a general sense. The "false semblaunt" of Gower, Confes. Amant., II : "Of fals semblaunt if I shall telle, Out of the which deceipte floweth." They are registered here on earth to be punished hereafter. 59. The plague of Ægina is described by Ovid, Metamorph. VII., Stonestreet's Tr. : O'er heaps of dead, and straight augments the heap: Another, while his strength and tongue pre vailed, Bewails his friend, and falls himself bewailed; The birth of the Myrmidons, "who still retain the thrift of ants, though now transformed to men," is thus given in the same book : |