CANTO XIX Dante seems to say, must be to us one of two things -a fire upon the head kindling our loftiest faculties with power from on high, or a fire upon the feet, the torment which comes upon the man who sets his lowest faculties uppermost. The reference to ordination is very subtly suggested in lines 28-30:

Symbolism of the Inversion

Even as the flaming of anointed things is wont
To move upon the outer surface only,

So was it there from the heels to the points.

The suggestion has been made that Dante is thinking of the oily skin of priests who have grown fat on the spoils of their simony; but it is much more probable that the reference is still to ordination. In the consecration of bishops, the anointing or unction with the chrism is an essential part of the ceremony. It is possible, of course, that Dante is thinking of the sacrament of Extreme Unction, in which the feet and other parts of the body are anointed. If so, his meaning is that this last anointing of the dying is powerless to save men whose simony destroyed the very meaning of the Sacraments: their feet still bear the traces of the holy oil, but all the same the fire of perdition plays upon the surface of it.

The scornful symbolism is carried out in many of Simonists. other directions. When, for example, he first addressed Nicholas, Dante tells us that he stooped down to hear his reply

even as the friar who is confessing

The treacherous assassin, who, when he is fixed,
Recalls him, so that death may be delayed.1

1 Inf. xix. 49-51.

The punishment of assassins was burial head down- CANTO XIX ward in the earth; and Dante may himself have seen one of these criminals at the last moment, when the soil was about to be filled in around his head, gain a short respite by recalling the friar under pretence of making a further confession. It is something more than a mere simile. The suggestion is that simoniacal Popes are 'treacherous assassins' of the Church, murderers of her spiritual life, and therefore justly meet the assassin's doom. The openings in the rock remind him appropriately of the little stone-pulpits in which so often unworthy priests had stood to administer the sacrament of Baptism; it is fitting that now they should stand in them on their heads in token of the perversion of this sacrament. Further, the way in which each guilty Pope as he comes crushes his predecessor down into the fissure and takes his place, is simply a scornful infernal caricature of that Apostolic Succession which they had bought and sold. Simon Magus has his long line of successors as surely as Simon Peter. And they too have their ordination: because they laid their hands on the heads of unworthy men, now their own heads are laid for ever on the feet of their predecessors, receiving from that long non-Apostolic line the gift of the unholy spirit -Simony being a sin which, once begun, is easily transmitted from Pope to Pope. In short, Dante deliberately constructed this punishment in every detail of it to indicate the shame and everlasting contempt which he believed God would pour out on men who perverted the whole meaning of the

T

CANTO XIX Christian religion by buying and selling the Holy Ghost.

Sacrilege,
Real and
Imaginary.

One point remains which is interesting for its personal reference to Dante himself. We saw how he compares the perforations in the rock to the little openings in 'my beautiful St. John,' in which the priest stood when baptizing-one of which, he adds, not many years ago

I broke for some one who was drowning in it:
Be this a seal all men to undeceive.1

The story as given by old writers is that on
some festival day (according to one tradition, an
Easter Eve, the same Eve as in the poem here), the
Baptistery of Florence being crowded, a boy fell head
foremost into one of the little stone-pulpits for the
priests, and became so wedged that he was in danger
of being suffocated. To save the boy's life, Dante,
who was in the crowd, called for an axe, broke the
side of the pulpit, and set him free. Evidently his
enemies denounced this as an act of sacrilege; and
the poet here gives 'a seal all men to undeceive.'
What then is this 'seal'? Simply the setting side
by side, as he does here, of true sacrilege and ap-
parent. To his mind, a human life was more sacred
than any stonework of a church, even though it
formed part of the holy font of baptism itself. It is
quite possible that the charge of sacrilege against
Dante was urged by ecclesiastics worthy of this
Moat, for men who destroy the spirit of religion
are ever the most jealous of its forms; and this is
his reply. In effect he says: Which is the real
1 Inf. xix. 19-21.

sacrilege: for the sake of a human life to destroy a CANTO XIX piece of church-furniture, or for the sake of wealth

to destroy the Church itself by selling its holy offices to unholy men, who prove its spiritual assassins? I, indeed, broke the baptismal font, you break the sacrament itself, destroying at one stroke the double baptism of water and of fire.'

CHAPTER XVIII

Bolgia IV.-
Diviners.

CIRCLE VIII.—MALEBOLGE: THE FRAUDULENT

Bolgia IV. Diviners

CANTO XX WHEN Virgil had carried Dante out of the valley of the Simoniacs, he laid him down on the summit of the arch of the next bridge, a rugged cliff so steep that even 'for the goats it would be hard passage.' The reference is probably to the difficulty and danger of climbing safely across the sin punished in the fourth Moat of Malebolge. It is Divination, a sin which not infrequently attacks men of intellect. It is more than possible that Dante himself may have felt its fascination, and, but for the protecting arms of Reason, might have stumbled and fallen into its abyss. The sure step of Virgil on this steep ridge has, however, a special significance. We must remember that the popular legends of the Middle Ages had transformed the great Latin poet into a diviner and enchanter,' and, of course, had Dante accepted this view he must have set Virgil in this very Moat. He did, indeed, regard him as a diviner in the true sense-a prophet outside of Israel, who foresaw the advent of the Christ. It was necessary, therefore, to vindicate Virgil against the 1 See Comparetti's Virgil in the Middle Ages.

Virgil's
Repute as a
Wizard.