INFERNO, Episode 113. Popes In Hell: Inferno, Canto XIX, Lines 46 - 63

Now we come to it: the daring part, the audacious part, and (dare we say it?) the funny part.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we stand with our pilgrim, Dante, and his guide, Virgil, on the floor of the third evil pouch, the third of the malebolge, in the eighth circle of Inferno with its many rings of fraud.

We know we're in for a condemnation of the church. But nothing could prepare the reader--or the pilgrim!--for the notion that a Holy Father can end up in hell.

What a passage this is, full of interiority and bravado, all woven in a fine tapestry with ever so many threads!

Here are the segments of this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:14] My English translation of this passage: Inferno, Canto XIX, lines 46 - 63. If you'd like to read along, just see below.

[03:09] The first address to the damned soul upside down in the hole. He's still an unknown figure--and it's important that we keep him that way.

[05:52] But he does mention Pope Boniface VIII. In fact, he's expecting his arrival. Who was Boniface VIII. A historical summary.

[12:59] Dante the pilgrim acts as the confessor--which indicates lay authority, the very thing Boniface VIII was so intent on stamping out.

[15:33] Don't miss the humor in this passage! And don't miss its audacity.

[21:22] Here's how tightly constructed this passage is: more Ovid, more metamorphoses, a reference to the opening allusion in Canto XIX, and a reference back to the sexual sins of Canto XVIII, all woven together in a few lines.

[23:21] A moment of the pilgrim's interiority.

[27:28] Virgil to the rescue! (Along with some savage irony tucked into the lines.) Why does Virgil need to rescue our pilgrim at this moment?And here is my English translation of Inferno, Canto XIX, Lines 46 – 63

“O whoever you are, with the up part of you stuck down

Like a fence post, you poor soul,”

I began to say to him, “it’s your move, if you can make it.”

I stood there like a friar who hears the confession

Of a perfidious assasin, the sort who, after he’s tied up,

Calls the priest back to slow up his coming death.

And this one cried out, “Are you already standing there,

I mean, seriously already standing right there, Boniface?

Then the writing has lied to me by several years.

“Are you already so sated by the profits

For which you didn’t even fear to seduce

The beautiful lady by ignominy, and then to rape her?”

I became just like someone who after lots of mockery

And without really understanding what’s been said

Just stands there and doesn’t know what to say back.

So Virgil said, “Tell him straight off:

‘I’m not that one, not the one you believe I am.’”

And I thus replied as I’d been told to do.