The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

of Malatestino, were by his order thrown into the sea and drowned, as here prophesied or narrated, near the village of Cattolica on the Adriatic. ↩

Malatestino had lost one eye. ↩

Rimini. ↩

Focara is a headland near Cattolica, famous for dangerous winds, to be preserved from which mariners offered up vows and prayers. These men will not need to do it; they will not reach that cape. ↩

Curio, the banished Tribune, who, fleeing to Cjesar’s camp on the Rubicon, urged him to advance upon Rome. Lucan, Pharsalia, I, Rowe’s Tr.:⁠—

“To Caesar’s camp the busy
Curio fled; Curio, a speaker turbulent and bold,
Of venal eloquence, that served for gold,
And principles that might be bought and sold.
⋮
To Caesar thus, while thousand cares infest,
Revolving round the warrior’s anxious breast,
His speech the ready orator addressed.
⋮
‘Haste, then, thy towering eagles on their way;
When fair occasion calls, ’tis fatal to delay.’ ”

↩

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 Note 137. ↩

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 neighbors. 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 Perigueux, 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 neighbors, with the Count of Perigueux, 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 endeavored by his satires to undo the peace, and to show how each was dishonored by it. And he had great advantages and great misfortunes by thus exciting feuds between them. He wrote many satires, but only two songs. The king of Aragon called the songs of Giraud de Borneil the wives of Bertrand 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 ot Bertrand de Born.

“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 honors. And he lived long and became a Cistercian monk.”

Fauriel, Histoire de la Poésie Provençale, Adler’s Tr., p. 483, quoting part of this passage, adds:⁠—

“In this notice the old biographer indicates the dominant trait of Bertrand’s character very distinctly; it was an unbridled passion for war. He loved it not only as the occasion for exhibiting proofs of valor, for acquiring power, and for winning glory, but also, and even more on account of its hazards, on account of the exaltation of courage and of life which it produced, nay, even for the sake of the tumult, the disorders, and the evils which are accustomed to follow in its train. Bertrand de Born is the ideal of the undisciplined and adventuresome warrior of the Middle Age, rather than that of the chevalier in the proper sense of the term.”

See also Millot, Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours, I 210, and Histoire Littéraire de la France par les Bénédictins de St. Maur, continuation, XVII 425.

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 Cistercian convent, among friars and fastings and penitence and prayers. ↩

A vast majority of manuscripts and printed editions read in this line, Re Giovanni, King John, instead of Re Giovane, the Young King. Even Boccaccio’s copy, which he wrote out