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July 23, 2010
Dante Blogging - Canto XXVII
Yes, it's been awhile. But I''m back to it!
Canto XXVII
The last canto began with an apostrophe to Florence - XXVII lists the cities of the Romagna, which "is not and has never been / free of war within her tyrants' hearts..." (37-38). True to his naming the Romagna a region of tyrants, Dante gives a long list of heraldic symbols.
The sinner Dante talks with in this canto is Guido da Montefeltro, a famous leader of the Ghibbelines who, in his old age, became a Franciscan and an occasional advisor to Pope Boniface VIII. Dante sees the last as a sign of a false renunciation of the world - anyone who was a friend of Caetani could not have been a true friar.
Boniface would reign as pope until 1303, so in the cosmos of the Commedia he is still alive. Dante can damn him only through the words of others, like Guido - who wishes him in Hell. Guido says that Boniface asked him for advice on how to destroy the Colonna family - and that when he hesitated offered him absolution in advance for the sin.
When Guido came to die - and he managed to do that in Assisi itself - St Francis came for him, but was beaten out by a logic-chopping devil. The devil says:
One who does not repent can't be absolved,
nor can a man repent and will at once
the law of contradiction rules it out.'
Ah sorrow! when I woke to my position
and heard him say as he grabbed hold, "Perhaps
you hadn't thought that I was a logician.'
Of course Hell observes the Law of Noncontradiction.
This death-bed scene is a great medieval topos - I've written about it before here, and provided a link to Bosch's Death and the Miser.
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Posted by CrankyProfessor at July 23, 2010 6:07 AM