Skip Navigation

The Cambridge Quarterly 1991 XX(1):1-24; doi:10.1093/camqtly/XX.1.1
© 1991 by Cambridge Quarterly
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Mason, H.A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

A Journey through Hell Dante's Inferno Re-visited: The magnificent contrapasso- Canto XIX

H.A. Mason

(in which Dante sees below him a place full oj holes, and in each a man guilty of simony inserted upside down with flames burning the soles of his feet. When Dante expresses a wish to interview the one who seems to be the principal sinner, Virgil obligingly carries Dante down to the hole in the ground. It instantly appears that the sinner takes Dante to be the pope Boniface, come down before the appointed time. When, at Virgil's request, Dante disabuses him, the sinner confesses that he was in life Pope Nicholas III. He tells Dante that all the popes guilty of simony have been planted one on top of the other, and that the pile of inverted sinners will not be complete until the arrival of Clement V.

Dante cannot restrain his indignation as he is made to contemplate the foul succession of papal sinners, descendants spiritually of Simon the Sorcerer, who wanted to buy the power to work miracles. Dante's vision extends to comprehend all who in the history of the world have misused money to tread down the good and raise up the bad. In particular, he laments the consequences of the grant of power to the pope by the Emperor Constantine. Virgil approves Dante's plain speaking and carries him back up to the top of the arch connecting the fourth to the fifth dyke. Then he gently sets Dante down on the stony eminence.)


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.