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

my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets, and a byword to the world; which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of the Jews.’ As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and ate the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this the seditious came in presently, and, smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her that they would cut her throat immediately, if she did not show them what food she had gotten ready. She replied, that she had saved a very fine portion of it for them; and withal uncovered what was left of her son. Hereupon they were seized with a horror and amazement of mind, and stood astonished at the sight, when she said to them: ‘This is mine own son, and what hath been done was mine own doing. Come, eat of this food; for I have eaten of it myself. Do not you pretend to be either more tender than a woman, or more compassionate than a mother. But if you be so scrupulous, and do abominate this my sacrifice, as I have eaten the one half, let the rest be reserved for me also.’ After which those men went out trembling, being never so much affrighted at anything as they were at this, and with some difficulty they left the rest of that meat to the mother. Upon which the whole city was full of this horrid action immediately; and while everybody laid this miserable case before their own eyes, they trembled as if this unheard of action had been done by themselves. So those that were thus distressed by the famine were very desirous to die, and those already dead were esteemed happy, because they had not lived long enough either to hear or to see such miseries.”

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Shakespeare, King Lear, V 3:⁠—

“And in this habit
Met I my father with his bleeding rings,
Their precious stones new lost.”

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In this fanciful recognition of the word omo (homo, man) in the human face, so written as to place the two o’s between the outer strokes of the m, the former represent the eyes, and the latter the nose and cheekbones:⁠—

Brother Berthold, a Franciscan monk of Regensburg, in the thirteenth century, makes the following allusion to it in one of his sermons. See Wackernagel, Deutsches Lesebuch, I 678. The monk carries out the resemblance into still further detail:⁠—

“Now behold, ye blessed children of God, the Almighty has created you soul and body. And he has written it under your eyes and on your faces, that you are created in his likeness. He has written it upon your very faces with ornamented letters. With great diligence are they embellished and ornamented. This your learned men well understand, but the unlearned may not understand it. The two eyes are two o’s. The h is properly no letter; it only helps the others; so that homo with an h means Man. Likewise the brows arched above, and the nose down between them are an m, beautiful with three strokes. So is the ear a d, beautifully rounded and ornamented. So are the nostrils beautifully formed like a Greek ε, beautifully rounded and ornamented. So is the mouth an i, beautifully adorned and ornamented. Now behold, ye good Christian people, how skilfully he has adorned you with these six letters, to show that ye are his own, and that he has created you! Now read me an o and an m and another o together; that spells homo. Then read me a d and an e and an i together; that spells dei. Homo dei, man of God, man of God!”

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Forese Donati, the brother-in-law and intimate friend of Dante.

“This Forese,” says Buti, “was a citizen of Florence, and was brother of Messer Corso Donati, and was very gluttonous; and therefore the author feigns that he found him here, where the Gluttons are punished.”

Certain vituperative sonnets, addressed to Dante, have been attributed to Forese. If authentic, they prove that the friendship between the two poets was not uninterrupted. See Rossetti, Early Italian Poets, Appendix to Part II. ↩

The same desire that sacrifice and atonement may be complete. ↩

Matthew 27:46:⁠—

“Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani? that is to say. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

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Outside the gate of Purgatory, where those who had postponed repentance till the last hour were forced to wait as many years and days as they had lived impenitent on earth, unless aided by the devout prayers of those on earth. See Canto IV. ↩

Nella, contraction of Giovannella, widow of Forese. Nothing is known of this good woman but the name, and what Forese here says in her praise. ↩

Covino, Descriz. Geograf. dell’ Italia, p. 52, says:⁠—

“In the district ot Arborea, on the slopes of the Gennargentu, the most vast and lofty mountain range of Sardinia, spreads an alpine country which in Dante’s time, being almost barbarous, was called the Barbagia.”

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Sacchetti, the Italian novelist of the fourteenth century, severely criticises the fashions of the Florentines, and their sudden changes, which he says it would take a whole volume of his stories to enumerate. In Nov. 178, he speaks of their wearing their dresses “far below their armpits,” and then “up to their ears”; and continues, in Napier’s version, Florentine History, II 539:⁠—

“The young Florentine girls, who used to dress so modestly, have now changed the fashion of their hoods to resemble courtesans,