the blessed, this young Anjou prince, who had done nothing great in the world? Why should Dante, who is so inveterately fierce in his denunciations of the father, the hated Charles the Lame, be so tender with the son, who, though titular King of Hungary, yet died at the age of 23, without having achieved a single deed in his short life to render him famous ? Why should Dante place him in Paradise as one of the very few of his contemporaries whom he does mention as being there? It may have been because Dante wished to requite the personal kindness he had received from Charles; it may have been that Charles was a great admirer of Dante's poetry, a verse from which Dante represents him as quoting. Bartoli, however, is far more disposed to think that the real reason why Dante has introduced Charles Martel into his Paradise is for the express purpose of putting into his mouth a stern reprobation of his brother Robert, "the king only fit for preaching (Par. viii, 147), "the avaricious niggard" (ibid. 83, 84), who, as a usurper, was then sitting upon the throne that should rightly have belonged to Carobert, son of the elder brother, Charles Martel; and, last but not least, because it was that same Robert, whose Vicar, Ranieri di Zaccaria of Orvieto, in 1315 had pronounced against Dante a new sentence of banishment and death, a sentence which included also even Dante's sons. " Benvenuto says that Charles Martel, who up to this point has been speaking of the good dispositions of his mind towards Dante, now goes on to describe the vast dominions over which by right he should have reigned. These are (a) the Countship of Provence ; (b) the Kingdom of Naples and Apulia; (c) the Kingdom of Hungary; (d) the Kingdom of Sicily. Raymond Bérenger, Count of Provence, had four daughters. The three elder having espoused crowned heads, namely, the King of France, the King of England, and the elected King of the Romans (see footnote to Canto vi, 133), Raymond's sovereignty was inherited by his fourth daughter Beatrice. She married Charles of Anjou, who afterwards became Charles I, King of Naples and Sicily, and their son Charles II (le Boiteux) was the father of Charles Martel. He, therefore, as eldest son, should have succeeded to the County of Provence, as well as to the Kingdom of Naples. Quella sinistra riva che si lava Di Rodano, poi ch'è misto con Sorga,* Per suo signore a tempo m' aspettava : 60 *Sorga: La Sorgue is a small river which falls into the Rhone about five miles north of Avignon. It takes its rise in the celebrated fountain of Vaucluse, memorable for its connexion with Petrarch. Benvenuto says: "Sorgia fluvius purissimus admiscetur ipsi Rhodano apud Avinionem, cujus fons est notissimus diebus nostris potissime, quia novissimus poeta Petrarcha ibi diu suum studium fecit, et magnam partem librorum suorum." The Sorgue and the Rhone formed the western boundary of the County of Provence. + quei corno: The southern part of Italy, which then formed the Kingdom of Naples and Apulia, takes a curve to the south something like a horn. Its extremities were to the east, Bari in Apulia; to the west, Gaeta in Campania; and to the south, Catona in Calabria. Its northern boundaries were the river Tronto on the Adriatic side of the Apennines; and the Verde, or Garigliano, on the Tyrrhenian side. This territory was in Dante's time generally termed the Kingdom of Apulia, the continental portion of the Kingdom of Naples. Sicily had already been lost to the kingdom. s'imborga: The Gran Dizionario merely gives the meaning " is filled with towns." Longfellow translates "is towned." But Di Bari, di Gaeta e di Catona,* Da ove Tronto e Verde + in mare sgorga. That left bank which is laved by Rhone, after he has been mingled with the Sorgue, awaited me for its lord in due course of time. And that horn of Ausonia (Italy) which has for its suburbs (i.e. is bounded by) Bari, Gaeta, and Catona, (beginning) from where Tronto (to the east) and Verde (i.e. the Garigliano to the west) fall into the sea. Charles Martel then describes the Kingdom of Hungary, of which he became de jure King, and was I very much prefer the interpretation given by Casini, and which is also adopted by Haselfoot, who, in his note, says that the literal meaning of 1. 61 is that the territory "makes suburbs " of these three towns, i.e. they are at its extremities. Casini says: "Per borghi s' intendevano nel medioevo i gruppi di case posti alle estremità delle città, fuori delle mura e in corrispondenza delle porte; il verbo imborgarsi dovrebbe dunque significare avere a modo di borghi, cioè, nel nostro caso, avere per estremi confini.... La maggior parte dei commentatori spiega questo verbo nel senso di avere per città: inesattamente, perchè nè Bari e Gaeta erano le sole città del Regno, nè città fu mai il piccolo paese [village] di Catona, sull' estrema punta della Calabria di faccia alla Sicilia." * Catona: Some of the old editions read Crotona but nearly all the best MSS., the first four editions, Lana, Anon. Fior., the Post. Cass., Buti, etc., read Catona. Crotona which lies to the N.E. of Calabria Ulteriore, is by no means one of the extremities of the Apulian Kingdom, whereas Catona is in the point of Southern Italy, exactly facing Messina. + Verde: This I understand to be the Garigliano, the ancient Liris, which, says Benvenuto, labitur in mare tuscum. Many have tried to prove, however, that the Verde referred to is a little stream of that name which flows into the river Tronto near Ascoli, in the Marca d' Ancona. But as Blanc (Voc. Dant.) points out, if this Verde were only the little tributary of the Tronto, it would be as though some writer, wishing to describe the frontier between England and Scotland, were to name first the Tweed, the real boundary river, and then the Till, a small stream that flows into it, instead of saying that the frontier is formed on the eastern side or portion by the Tweed, and on the west by the Esk. See note on Purg. iii, 131, in Readings on the Purgatorio, 3rd edition, London, 1907, vol. i, pp. 112, 113. crowned, but never reigned there; and he further mentions that had Sicily not been lost to his grandfather, Charles I (of Anjou), at the " Sicilian Vespers in 1282, he would also have reigned over that fair land. * Fulgeami già in fronte la corona Di quella terra che il Danubio riga E la bella Trinacria, che caliga * Tra Pachino e Peloro,† sopra il golfo 65 70 caliga: i.e. si copre di caligine, is covered with darkness, "la quale nella costa orientale, sopra il golfo di Catania dominato dal vento di scirocco o Euro, per la vicinanza dell' Etna spesso è offuscata di caligine e di fumo" (Casini). + Pachino e Peloro: The ancient Cape Pachynus is now Capo Passaro on the South. It is on a small island; but on the mainland, not far off, a small town still retains the old name, Pachino. Peloro, the ancient Pelorus, is now Capo del Faro by Messina. Tifeo: Typhöeus or Typhon, was a giant with a hundred heads, son of Tartarus and Terra. Having made war against the gods, and frightened them, he was eventually put to flight by the thunderbolts of Jupiter, and crushed down under Mount Etna, where his efforts to escape were supposed to account for the convulsions of nature taking place there. Dr. Moore (Studies in Dante, p. 216, § 11) writes: "We note next the curiously rationalistic treatment of the myth of Typhöeus in Par. viii, 70, where Dante says that the volcanic phenomena of Sicily are due to the presence of sulphur and not to the struggles of the buried Typhoeus. It only concerns us to observe that Dante here follows Ovid, and not Virgil, both of whom give different traditions as to these phenomena. Ovid, in Met. v, 346 seqq., attributes them to Typhoeus, but Virgil, in Æn. iii, 578 seqq., to Enceladus. Mr. Butler, referring to the latter passage only, wrongly ascribes an error to Dante here." § nascente solfo: "Ossia per quello che chiamano, nel linguaggio moderno, acido solforoso il quale eruttato insieme a altre sostanze e decomposte, fa che poi nasca lo zolfo (Ferrazzi, Manuale Dantesco, Bassano, 1877; vol. v, p. 433). The Mosso Palermo a gridar: 'Mora, mora.' + Already glittered on my brows the crown of that 75 greater part of the sulphur used in Europe is imported from Sicily. No one who has crossed the interior of Sicily can have failed to be struck by the long lines of mules that one meets on the high roads, each with a couple of large blocks of sulphur on a pack saddle, as also the equally long trains of little yellow carts adorned with every kind of inscription intended to be devotional, though often of very questionable piety. * Attesi: If the tyranny of Charles of Anjou's rule had not provoked the Sicilians to rise in insurrection, and overthrow the French dynasty, then would Sicily, by the due process of succession, have come under the dominion of a dynasty formed by the union of the Anjous and the Hapsburgs, seeing that Charles Martel married Clemence the daughter of Rudolph; and moreover the island would not have passed into the hands of Pedro III King of Aragon. + Mora, mora: Of Charles of Anjou, his misdeeds, and the Sicilian Vespers, Ariosto says (Orl. Fur. xxxiii, st. 20):— "Vedete un altro Carlo, che a' conforti Del buon Pastor fuoco in Italia ha messo; E in due fiere battaglie ha duo re morti, Vedete a un suon di vespro tutta uccisa.” Ariosto (ibid. xxiii, st. 52) has introduced the words mora, mora in relating the tumultuous attack on the innocent Zerbino by the infuriated populace : "Tutto 'l popol gridando: 'Mora, mora,' Vien per punir Zerbin del non suo fallo." We also find the whole episode of the Sicilian Vespers related by Fazio degli Uberti, in the Dittamondo, lib. ii, cap. xxix :— Miracol parve ad ogni persona, 66 Che ad una voce tutta la Sicilia |