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

id="note-1394" epub:type="endnote">

The Seraphim, clothed with six wings, as seen in the vision of the Prophet Isaiah 6:2:⁠—

“Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.”

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In the original, S’ io m’ intuassi come tu t’ immii; if I in-theed myself as thou in-meest thyself. Dantesque words, like inluia, Note 1398. ↩

The Mediterranean, the greatest of seas, except the ocean, surrounding the earth.

Bryant, “Thanatopsis”:⁠—

“And poured round all
Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste.”

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Extending eastward between Europe and Africa. Dante gives the length of the Mediterranean as ninety degrees. Modern geographers make it less than fifty. ↩

Marseilles, about equidistant from the Ebro, in Spain, and the Magra, which divides the Genoese and Tuscan territories. Being a small river, it has but a short journey to make. ↩

Buggia is a city in Africa, on nearly the same parallel of longitude as Marseilles. ↩

The allusion here is to the siege of Marseilles by a portion of Caesar’s army under Tribonius, and the fleet under Brutus. Purgatorio XVIII 101:⁠—

“And Caesar, that he might subdue Ilerda,
Thrust at Marseilles, and then ran into Spain.”

Lucan, who describes the siege and sea-fight in the third book of his Pharsalia, says:⁠—

“Meanwhile, impatient of the lingering war,
The chieftain to Iberia bends afar,
And gives the leaguer to Tribonius care.”

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Folco, or Folchetto, of Marseilles (Folquet de Marseilles) was a noted Troubadour, who flourished at the end of the twelfth century. He was the son of a rich merchant of Marseilles, and after his father’s death, giving up business for pleasure and poetry, became a frequenter of courts and favorite of lords and princes. Among his patrons are mentioned King Richard of England, King Alfonso of Aragon, Count Raymond of Toulouse, and the Sire Barral of Marseilles. The old Provençal chronicler in Raynouard, V 150, says:⁠—

“He was a good Troubadour, and very attractive in person. He paid court to the wife of his lord, Sire Barral, and besought her love, and made songs about her. But neither for prayers nor songs could he find favor with her so as to procure any mark of love, of which he was always complaining in his songs.”

Nevertheless this Lady Alazais listened with pleasure to his songs and praises; and was finally moved to jealousy, if not to love. The Troubadour was at the same time paying his homage to the two sisters of the Sire Barral, Lady Laura and Lady Mabel, both beautiful and de gran valor, and being accused thereof, fell into disfavor and banishment, the Lady Alazais wishing to hear no more his prayers nor his songs. In his despair he took refuge at the court of William, lord of Montpellier, whose wife, daughter of the Emperor Manuel, “comforted him a little, and besought him not to be downcast and despairing, but for love of her to sing and make songs.”

And now a great change came over him. The old chronicler goes on to say:⁠—

“And it came to pass that the Lady Alazais died; and the Sire Barral, her husband and his lord, died; and died the good King Richard, and the good Count Raymond of Toulouse, and King Alfonso of Aragon: whereat, in grief for his lady and for the princes who were dead, he abandoned the world, and retired to a Cistercian convent, with his wife and two sons. And he became Abbot of a rich abbey in Provence, called Torondet, and afterwards Bishop of Toulouse, and there he died.”

It was in 1200 that he became a Cistercian, and he died in 1233. It would be pleasant to know that he atoned for his youthful follies by an old age of virtues. But unfortunately for his fame, the old nightingale became a bird of prey. He was deeply implicated in the persecutions of the Albigenses, and the blood of those “slaughtered saints” makes a ghastly rubric in his breviary. ↩

Dido, queen of Carthage. The Ottimo says:⁠—

“He seems to mean, that Folco loved indifferently married women, virgins, and widows, gentle and simple.”

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Phillis of Thrace, called Rodopeia from Mount Rodope near which she lived, was deserted by her Athenian lover Demophoon, of whom Chaucer, Legende of Good Women, 2442, gives this portrait:⁠—

“Men knewe him well and didden hym honour,
For at Athenis duke and lorde was he,
As Theseus his father hath ibe,
That in his tyme was of grete renown,
No man so grete in all his regioun,
And like his father efface and of stature;
And false of love, it came hym of nature;
As doeth the foxe, Renarde the foxes sonne,
Of kinde, he coulde his olde father wonne
Withouten lore; as can a drake swimme,
When it is caught and caried to the brimme.”

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Hercules was so subdued by love for Iole, that he sat among her maidens spinning with a distaff. ↩

See Note 1385. ↩

The ways of Providence,

“From seeming evil still educing good.”

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Rahab, who concealed the spies of Joshua among the flax-stalks on the roof of her house. Joshua 2:6. ↩

Milton, Paradise Lost, IV 776:⁠—

“Now had night measured with her shadowy cone
Half-way up hill this vast sublunar vault.”

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The first soul redeemed when Christ descended into Limbo. “The first shall be last, and the last first.” ↩

The Crucifixion. If any one is disposed to criticise the play upon words in this beautiful passage, let him remember the Tu es Petrus et super banc petram edificabo ecclesiam meam. ↩

Hebrews 11:31:⁠—

“By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with