GANTO III.

exciting, rather than repressing the curiosity of his pupil, had told him not to mis-employ his time in enquiring about these crowds; for that they were unworthy his attention. look and along'. In this he is obeyed; and of the innumerable multitudes that run round after the flag (whose whirling is no bad emblem of their worthless levity), only one individual is in any way noticed, and even that one without deigning to state his name. It is not difficult to ascertain the person meant; although some moderns have (as usual.) done their best to render it so. Dante speaks of one whom, having been personally known to him, he recognises at the first glance ebbi riconosciuto; and who had renounced some elevated post through baseness of spirit fece il rifiuto gran per viltà. Now the only renunciation of any thing meriting the epithet great, during the life of Dante, was that of the Papacy by Celestine V individual whom he must have seen frequently. This were enough, if we had not (which we have) the direct evidence of Dante's own children, and of all the earliest of the commentators; for it is only from the Imolese downwards that there are any doubts suggested.

.an

On the fourth of April 1292 died Nicholas IV, and left the sacred college in alarming confusion to the scandal of all Christians; but, above the rest, of the Italians, who were not only religiously interested but politically. Nothing, I think presents

CANTO 111.

every

a more piteous spectacle than their country then did. Civil discord at its most cruel height State, every town, every family in dissension nearly one half of the population ejected from their homes and living openly by rapine — every castle become a fortress, every house a tower, no law but the sword treasons, rapes, robberies, slaughter in fine in every imaginable form almost deprive Italy at that period of the appearance of a nation of rational beings. There appeared to be no remedy half so plausible in that convulsive paroxysm of society as the election to the Popedom of a good and able man, who should change the impious system introduced by many of his decessors, and, instead of fomenting, endeavour to restrain the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and re-establish something like law and morals. To succeed in this it was alsó necessary that he should be an Italian: and to engage the conclave to close so shameful an interregnum in the Church by making such an election, our poet (who, although only in his twenty-eighth year(1) and in the freshness of mourning for his Beatrice, had been already on several important embassies and, amongst other places, at Rome) directed a solemn letter to the Cardinals (2). Whether this awakened

(1) Hell. Comment. Canto 1. p. 133.

pre

(2) Negri. Ist. Scritt. Fior. This seems to have been unknown to Sismondi (Hist. des Republiques Italiennes. Tome iv. p. 73–182. } whose account of Daute, otherwise not very inexact, is obscured by theory to be supported against irrefragable testimony.

晶

CANTO TI

their consciences, or that the majority had already become ashamed of their ambitious disputes, or that it entered into the scheme of one of them to insure his own preferment by deferring it for a

few months, or that they were terrified by the Roman fever of which several of them had already died and of which others were ill, their votes were at length united in favour of Peter Morrone, a hermit of fair reputation; who on the fifth of July, 1294, assumed the mantle by the title of Celestine V. Great was the satisfaction caused by this event, and our author joined in it most cordially; not only on account of Peter's blameless manners, but also because thus seemed baffled the wiles of one of the purpled candidates, whose foul conduct and guilty principles could not by any mask have been entirely concealed from so penetrating an eye as Dante's. Three dignitaries (1)

(1) An Archbishop, and two bishops. The mode of his nomination is a good example of what Mr. Gibbon calls the uncertain breath of a Conclave. Cardinal Latino having told his brethern one day that a holy man had had a dream that they should all die before two months unless they agreed on some one to fill the vacant chair of S. Peter, he who was afterwards Boniface VIII replied sneeringly I suppose this is one of the visions of your Peter Morrone.' 'It is (answered Latino) and the revelation thus made to that man of God proves that the gifts of the Holy-ghost render him worthy to rule over the faithful:'— on which he was voted Pope. The threat of death to men who had seen their companions expire and were themselves ill of the same fever had no doubt much effect; but the whole seems to have been a plot of Boniface VIII, who, not being able to gain his election at that moment, had formed a plan of insuring it shortly after. Sismondi. Hist. des. Repub. Ital. Vol. iv. p. 76.

CANTO 111.

were sent in procession to the mountain where the hermit had his cell to inform him of his elec. tion, and, when the poor mendicant in astonishment at their rank would have prostrated himself at their feet, they flung themselves down at his to crave a benediction from his Holiness; innumerable were the crowds that flocked along the roads leading to his retirement (1); as he past, all bent their knees before him, many from reverence for his sacred character, and some too from wonder at seeing a beggar transformed into a Monarch; and, that his entry into the decorated streets of Aquila might want no possible brilliancy ecclesiastical or civil, two troops of royal guards in various and rich uniforms, and mounted on caparisoned horses of the two finest breeds of the south and north of Europe, were super-added to the usual costly ones of the Papacy; and, while the ass, on which the 'servant of the servants of God' rode, proceeded in slow pomp amid Princes and Bishops and Cardinals, to the sound of every kind of sweet music and amid clouds of incense, over a carpet of flowers profusely strewed by white-robed youths in many vivid emblematic patterns, (the balconies overflowing with groups of the noblest and most

(1) In fact it was they prevented his escape: for his first impulse was to run away; but finding every avenue crowded, he was compelled to return to his cell. He indeed appears to have been a man of the weakest intellects; so that Boccaccio calls him huomo idiota. Comento. Vol. 1. · P. 148.

CANTO 17.

beautiful Italian ladies) its bridle was held by two crowned heads, those of Naples and of Hungary. But this universal gladness, and all the fond speculations on the virtue of the Pope, and on the calm it was to diffuse from the Alps to the Faro, were soon found fallacious. His only considerable actions were both of eminent detriment to his country the creation of 12 Cardinals, almost all Frenchmen, in order to flatter Charles II of Naples; and a law in favour of a Pope's abdicating, which had always been held impossible. The natural consequence of the former not long after was the removal of the Papal court to Avignon: and as to the latter, though not calculated indeed to give often rise to abuse, in Celestine's case it did; for he availed himself of it immediately, and after only five months Pontificate set out to return to his hermitage on the thirteenth of December, 1294; leaving the Church as a defenceless prey to the rapacity of his importunate successor to the Cardinal whom Dante had feared so much, and whom writers agree in depicting as a monster of avarice and pride; so that even the devout Imolese says of him: and to avow the truth he was a magnanimous sinner (1).' This abdication being however considered of most dubious orthodoxy, the Cardinal in question, (Caetan) who took the title

(1) Et de rei veritate fuit magnanimus peccator. Com. ap. Mur. Antiq. Ital. Vol. 1. p. 1089.