Purgatorio Canto XXXI:70-90. The Libyan king, one of Dido’s suitors, hence Iarbas’s land is Libya, and the winds that blow from there are the southerly winds off the African Coast.
Inferno Canto XVII:79-136. The son of Daedalus, who made waxen wings in order for them to escape from Crete. Flying too near the sun Icarus’s wings melted and he fell into the sea. He was buried on the island of Icaria, and the Icarian Sea and the island, were named after him. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VIII 195.
Bishop of Assisi in 1282. He had joined the Order in 1210 and
accompanied Francis in his mission to
the Soldan.
Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. He is in the Fourth Sphere of the Sun.
An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned.
An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned.
Pope from 1198 to 1216, he called himself Christ’s Vicar, from whom
worldly rulers received their kingdoms as fiefs. He operated an interventionist
policy. Power was centralised through the Papal legates. He became the guardian
of Frederick II after Constance’s death. After the murder
of the Papal legate Peter of Castelnau, he initiated the vicious Albigensian
Crusade against Provençal heretics.
Paradiso Canto XI:43-117. He confirmed the Franciscan Order in 1210.
Inferno Canto XXX:1-48. Juno was angered because of Jupiter’s adultery with Semele, whom she punished, and took vengeance on the house of Cadmus of Thebes, her father. She pursued Ino, Semele’s sister, by driving her husband Athamas mad. He killed their son Learchus, and drove Ino to throw herself over a cliff, with their son Melicertes. Ino and Melicertes became sea-gods, namely Leucothea, the White Goddess, and Palaemon. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses III 261 and IV 519.
A member of a prominent family of Luccan Whites, alive in the year 1295.
Inferno Canto XVIII:100-136. He is in Hell for flattery.
Paradiso Canto IX:67-126. Iole, daughter of Eurytus, King of Oechalia, was loved by Hercules who had captured her. The love caused the jealousy of Deianira, his wife, who sent him, unknowingly, the fatal shirt of Nessus the Centaur, that caused his death. Nessus had been killed by Hercules after trying to carry off and rape Deianira, and steeped the shirt in his blood, containing the poison of the Hydra from the wound caused by Hercules’s poisoned arrow, telling Deianira the shirt was a love charm to win back Hercules’s affections. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses IX 13 et seq.
The daughter of Agamemnon King
of Mycenae, and Clytemnestra, and the sister of Electra and Orestes. She was sacrificed, at Aulis, by
her father, to gain favourable winds, for the Greek expedition to Troy. Diana substituted a hind for her, and
carried her to Tauris, as her priestess. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses XII 28 and
184, and Aeschylus’s Oresteian Trilogy.
Paradiso Canto V:1-84. She is mentioned, as the victim of her father’s rash vow.
The goddess of the rainbow, the daughter of Thaumas and Electra, Juno’s messenger. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses IV 480 etc.
Purgatorio Canto XXI:34-75. She is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XII:1-36. The phenomenon of the double rainbow is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XXXIII:49-145. The double rainbow is again used.
The prophet (one of the four great prophets of the Old Testament with
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel).
Paradiso Canto XXV:64-96. Dante refers to Isaiah lxi 7,10 where the prophecy that the redeemed shall possess double things implies joy of the body as well as joy of the soul.
Isidore (c560-636) is the author of the Cyclopaedia, the main
Medieval Encylopedia.
Paradiso Canto X:130-148. He is in the fourth sphere of Prudence.
The daughter of Oedipus, by Jocasta, and sister
of Eteocles and Polynices. See Sophocles’s Theban
Trilogy.
Purgatorio Canto XXII:94-114. She is in Limbo. One of the people celebrated by Statius in his epic poetry.
The son of Isaac, the son of Abraham.
He is called Israel, after wrestling with the Lord at Peniel where he saw God
‘face to face’, see the Bible Genesis xxxii. His wife is Rachel. His brother Esau, whom he followed from the womb,
clutching Esau’s heel as a sign that he would supplant him, sold Jacob his
birthright for ‘a mess of pottage’, and Jacob by guile robbed Esau the elder of
his father Isaac’s blessing. Jacob is the type of the settler, Esau of the
hunter. See Genesis xxv and xxvii. Their rivalry was used as an analogy for
Church and Synagogue.
Inferno Canto IV:1-63. Christ takes his spirit from Limbo into Paradise.
Paradiso Canto VIII:85-148. The brothers as contrasting types.
Paradiso Canto XXI:52-142. Paradiso Canto XXII:1-99. Jacob’s
vision of the ladder is echoed by Dante’s vision. See Genesis xxviii 11-12.
The disciple of Christ. James the Greater, son of Zebedee, a fisherman
of Galilee, and the brother of John the Evangelist.
He was tried in Jerusalem in 44 AD by Herod Agrippa and executed. His supposed
tomb at Santiago de Compostella in Galicia, discovered in the 9th century,
became a place of worship, by the 11th century, next in importance to Jerusalem
and Rome, and he became the patron saint of Spain.
Purgatorio Canto XXIX:133-154. He appears in the Divine Pageant.
Purgatorio Canto XXXII:64-99. He was present at the Transfiguration, see Matthew xviii 1-8 when Christ shone like the sun in white raiment, and Moses and Elias appeared talking with him, and after they were overcome Christ said ‘Arise, and be not afraid’. Christ is the apple-tree, in accord with the Song of Solomon ii 3, ‘As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.’
Paradiso Canto XXV:1-63. He appears to Dante in the Stellar Heaven. Dante ascribes to him the authorship of the Epistle more usually attributed to the apostle James the Less, the ‘brother of the Lord’, which talks of God giving liberally in i 5. He was of the group with Peter and John whom Christ allowed nearer his presence, at the Transfiguration, the raising of the daughter of Jairus, and the Agony at Gethsemane.
Paradiso Canto XXV:64-96. Dante refers to James i 12.
King of the Balearic Islands (1276-1311), brother of Peter III of Aragon and therefore
uncle of Frederick II King of
Sicily.
Paradiso Canto XIX:91-148. He is
held as an example of poor kingship.
King of Sicily(1285-1296), and King of Aragon(1291-1327) and therefore alive at the time of the Vision. The elder brother of Frederick II of Sicily.
Purgatorio Canto III:103-145. The son of Peter (Pere) III of Aragon, and Constanza, daughter of Manfred.
Purgatorio Canto VII:64-136. Dante regards him as inferior to his father.
Paradiso Canto XIX:91-148. He is
held as an example of poor kingship.
The son of Aeson, who was sent by his uncle Pelias, from Iolchos in
Thessaly, to bring back the Golden Fleece from Colchis. He sailed the Argo, the
first ship, with the Argonauts, the Greek heroes. Medea
the witch, the king’s daughter, fell in love with him, and helped him, but he
abandoned her for Creusa. See Ovid’s
Metamorphoses VII and VIII. He also abandoned Hypsipyle, the daughter of King Thoas of
Lemnos, whom she had saved when the women of the island killed the male
inhabitants. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses XIII 399.
Inferno Canto XVIII:67-99. He is in the eighth circle, first chasm.
Paradiso Canto II:1-45. To wing the Golden Fleece he had to yoke the bronze-footed fire-breathing bulls, plough the field of Ares, and sow the serpent’s teeth. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VII 1 et seq.
Paradiso Canto XXXIII:49-145. The
voyage of the Argo is mentioned. Dante dates it to 1200BC.
Inferno Canto XIX:31-87. The brother of Onias. He induced Antiochus IV ruler of the Seleucid Empire (reigned 175-164 BC), whose self-conferred title was ‘Theos
Epiphanes’, ‘the evident God’, and who was the brother of Seleucus IV whom
he succeeded, to make him high-priest through bribery, and allow the
introduction of pagan customs. See 2 Maccabees iv 7.
Paradiso Canto V:1-84. The Gileadite who sacrificed his daughter,
after vowing to offer whatever came out of his gates to meet him, when he
returned from fighting the children of Ammon.
See Judges xi.
Eusebius Hieronymous Sophronius (342-420), born at Stridon in Dalmatia.
With Ambrose, Augustine and Gregory he is one of the four Latin
(western) Fathers of the Church. He retired into the Syrian desert for four
years where he studied Hebrew. He settled in Bethlehem in 386.His translation
of the Bible, the Vulgate, into Latin was eventually declared the official
version, by the Council of Trent.
Paradiso Canto XXIX:1-66. He spoke
of the Angels being created long before the rest of the universe, which was
contradicted by Aquinas.
Of Fiore, in Calabria (c1130-1202), a Cistercian monk, who founded a
monastery there. He claimed to have the power to interpret the prophetic books
of the Bible with special reference to the History of the Church. A new
dispensation (of the Holy Spirit, after the Father’s, and the Son’s), the third
epoch, was at hand, he said, of perfect love and spiritual freedom. This was
known as the Eternal Gospel. The spiritual party among the Franciscans seized
on it, and Fra Gherardo da Borgo San Donnino (Gerardua) wrote an Introduction
to the Eternal Gospel which was condemned as heresy in 1256. Bonaventura helped to suppress these
Joachists.
Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. He is in the Fourth Sphere of the Sun.
The wife of Laius King of Thebes. The mother, and, unintentionally, wife of Oedipus, King of Thebes, who killed his father. Her children Eteocles and Polynices fought over the kingship in the War of the Seven against Thebes, the subject of Statius’s Thebaid.
Purgatorio Canto XXII:55-93. She is mentioned.
The desert prophet who baptised Christ.
See the Gospel of St Luke 3.
Inferno Canto XIII:130-151. The Florentines adopted St John the Baptist as
their patron, displacing the Roman Mars, whose statue had stood on the site of
the Baptistery. The statue was then set up by the Arno. When Florence was
destroyed by the Goths (Attila is confused
with Totila the Goth leader), according to legend, the statue fell into the
Arno. Florence could not be rebuilt, it was believed, until the statue had been
reinstated, and it was rescued and set on a pillar on the Ponte Vecchio when
the city was restored, according to legend again, by Charlemagne. It remained
there till the great flood of 1333 carried away the bridge and statue. The
rejection of Mars was believed by Florentines to be at the root of the endless
factional conflict in their city.
Inferno Canto XXX:49-90. Master Adam of
Brescia counterfeited the Florentine gold florin, stamped with the figure
of St John.
Purgatorio Canto XXII:115-154. He ate locusts and honey in order to survive in the desert. See Matthew iii 4, Mark i 6. For his greatness see Matthew xi 11 and Luke vii 28.
Paradiso Canto IV:1-63. He exists with God in the Empyrean.
Paradiso Canto XVI:1-45. Patron Saint of Florence.
Paradiso Canto XVIII:100-136. He was figured on one side of the Florentine gold florin. His beheading, to fulfil Salome’s request to Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, son of Herod the Great, (engineered by her mother Herodias) is mentioned. See Mark vi 21-28.
Paradiso Canto XXXII:1-36. His seat
in Heaven and the ranks below him indicate one half of the Rose, where those
who acquired faith after Christ’s coming are seated. He corresponds to the Virgin, beneath whom rank those with faith in the Christ
to come.
The disciple of Christ, son of Zebedee, and brother of James. Presumed
author of the Fourth Gospel and, by tradition, of the Apocalypse, and therefore
identified with John the Divine. His emblem in art is
an eagle. (See Revelation iv 7. The four beasts are identified with Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, the fourth beast being a flying
eagle.)
Purgatorio Canto XXIX:133-154. He appears in the Divine Pageant.
Purgatorio Canto XXXII:64-99. He was present at the Transfiguration, see Matthew xviii 1-8 when Christ shone like the sun in white raiment, and Moses and Elias appeared talking with him, and after they were overcome Christ said ‘Arise, and be not afraid’. Christ is the apple-tree, in accord with the Song of Solomon ii 3, ‘As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.’
Paradiso Canto IV:1-63. He exists with God in the Empyrean.
Paradiso Canto XXV:97-139. At the Last Supper he was ‘leaning on Jesus’s bosom’. See John xiii 23. Christ, on the cross, committed Mary to his charge. See John xix 26-27.
The author of the Book of Revelation. Exiled by Domitian to the Aegean island of Patmos,
and traditionally identified with John the Evangelist,
the Apostle.
Inferno Canto XIX:88-133. Dante refers to the vision of the Great Whore, in Revelation xvii. The seven heads are interpreted as the seven virtues or sacraments, and the ten heads as the Ten Commandments, kept as long as the Popes were virtuous.
Purgatorio CantoXXIX:82-105. Dante uses his imagery for the Divine Pageant.
Purgatorio Canto XXIX:133-154. He appears in the Divine Pageant.
Paradiso Canto XXV:64-96. Dante refers to Revelation vii 9 where the redeemed are robed in white, and Dante links this to Isaiah’s statement that they shall possess double things implying joy of the body as well as joy of the soul.
Paradiso Canto XXVI:1-69. Revelation i 8. ‘I am Alpha and Omega the beginning and the ending.’
Paradiso Canto XXXII:115-151. He
sits to the right of Peter in
Heaven.
Petrus Hispanus who succeeded Adrian V
for a few months, and was killed in 1277, by the fall of the Papal Palace at
Viterbo. He wrote a much-used treatise on Logic in twelve books. The well-known
Memoria Technica verses Barbara Celarent etc are derived from it.
Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. He is in the Fourth Sphere of the Sun.
John XXII, Pope (1316-1334) A native of
Cahors.
Paradiso Canto XXVII:1-66. Indirectly referred to.
The son of Jacob, his best-beloved, the son of his
old age. His brothers cast him into a pit, stripping him of his coat of many
colours, and sold him to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt. There he
became an overseer in Potiphar’s household, whose wife tried to seduce him. He
refused, and she perjured herself, blaming him, and causing him to be
imprisoned. See Genesis xxix.
Inferno Canto XXX:91-129. Potiphar’s wife is in the tenth chasm.
The son of Nun, Moses’s minister, and successor,
who crossed the Jordan and led the Israelites in taking the Promised Land.
Purgatorio Canto XX:97-151. He is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto IX:67-126. Rahab aided his spies, allowing Jericho to be taken.
Paradiso Canto XVIII:1-57. He is in the Fifth Sphere of Mars.
King Juba of Numidia who sided with Pompey against Caesar and was defeated. He was compelled to commit
suicide in 46BC.
Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Mentioned in the summary of Imperial history.
The Disciple of Christ who betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver. See
Matthew xxvi 14 and 47, Mark xiv 43, Luke xxii 21, and xxii 47, John xviii 2.
He afterwards repented, threw the thirty pieces of silver in front of the chief
priests and elders, and then hung himself. See Matthew xxvii 3. The thirty
pieces of silver bought the potter’s field, called the field of blood, to bury
strangers in. See Matthew xxvii 7-10.
Inferno Canto XIX:88-133. He forfeited his place among the Disciples, and was replaced by Matthias.
Inferno Canto XXXI:97-145. The poets are set down in the Ninth Circle that swallowed him.
Inferno Canto XXXIV:55-69. He is tormented in one of Satan’s mouths.
Purgatorio Canto XX:43-96. A byword for treachery.
Purgatorio Canto XXI:76-136. He who sold Christ.
The brother of James. Author of the General Epistle of Jude.
Purgatorio Canto XXIX:133-154. He appears in the Divine Pageant
The Jewish patriotic heroine and a symbol of The Jewish struggle against
oppression She is usually shown holding the head of Holofernes the Assyrian general whom
she decapitated with a sword. See Apocrypha.
Paradiso Canto XXXII:1-36. She is seated in Heaven, below the Virgin.
There are many Julias in the Imperial Roman families. Here it is Julius Caesar’s daughter by Cornelia, the daughter of
Cinna, that is meant. She married Pompey.
She is mentioned as a type of the noble Roman woman.
Inferno Canto IV:106-129. She is among
the heroes and heroines in Limbo.
Gaius Julius Caesar, Roman General, Consul and Dictator from 49 to 44 BC when he was assassinated by Brutus, Cassius and the other conspirators. He
married Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, and had a daughter Julia.
Inferno Canto IV:106-129. He is among the heroes and heroines in Limbo.
Inferno Canto XXVIII:91-111. Advised by Curio, according to Lucan (see Pharsalia i. 281) Caesar crossed the Rubicon (‘iacta alea est – the die is cast’) near Rimini and declared war by that act against the Republic in 49BC. The Rubicon was at that time the boundary between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul.
Purgatorio Canto XVIII:76-111. He delegated the siege of Marseilles to Brutus in 49BC to attack Pompey’s lieutenants Afranius and Petreius at Lerida (Ilerda) in Catalonia.
Purgatorio Canto XXVI:67-111. Suetonius (Caesar 49) says that Caesar was accused of being King Nicomedes’s bedfellow, (Nicomedes was King of Bithynia), and that his soldiers chanted ribald songs about his predilections during his Gallic Triumph.
Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. His campaigns and assassination mentioned in the summary of Imperial history.
Paradiso Canto IX:67-126. His fleet won a victory over the Pompeians near Marseilles in 49BC.
Paradiso Canto XI:43-117. He is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XVI:1-45. He was,
according to legend, addressed in the plural as voi instead of tu when
he achieved pre-eminence. A Roman custom, disused there in Dante’s time.
The divine daughter of Saturn and Rhea, who married her brother Jupiter. The Queen of the Gods. She is the Roman equivalent of Hera, as he is of Zeus.
Inferno Canto XXX:1-48. Juno was angered because of Jupiter’s adultery with Semele, whom she punished, and took vengeance on the house of Cadmus of Thebes, her father. She pursued Ino, Semele’s sister by driving her husband Athamas mad. He killed their son Learchus, and drove Ino to throw herself over a cliff, with their son Melicertes. Ino and Melicertes became sea-gods, namely Leucothea, the White Goddess, and Palaemon. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses III 261 and IV 519.
Paradiso Canto XII:1-36. Iris, the rainbow, is her messenger.
Paradiso Canto XXVIII:1-57. The rainbow.
The divine son of Saturn and Rhea, born in Crete and watched over in his
infancy by the priests of Ida. With his brothers Neptune and Pluto he dethroned Saturn, and ruled the Heavens,
Neptune winning the oceans, and Pluto the underworld. His wife was Juno.
Inferno Canto XIV:43-72. The Giants made war on the gods, and were
overthrown by Jupiter’s lightning bolts and buried under Sicily. Vulcan the son of Juno was the god of
fire and the blacksmith of the gods, who with the Cyclopes forged Jupiter’s lightning bolt in
the fires of Mount Aetna on Sicily. He struck Capaneus,
an Argive chief, with lightning in the war of the seven against Thebes, for
scaling the wall (an allegory of pride).
Inferno Canto XXX:1-48. Juno was angered because of Jupiter’s adultery with Semele, whom she punished, and took vengeance on the house of Cadmus of Thebes, her father. She pursued Ino, Semele’s sister by driving her husband Athamas mad. He killed their son Learchus, and drove Ino to throw herself over a cliff, with their son Melicertes. Ino and Melicertes became sea-gods, namely Leucothea, the White Goddess, and Palaemon. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses III 261 and IV 519.
Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. He is depicted on the roadway.
Purgatorio Canto XXIX:106-132. He destroyed Phaethon to save the Earth, a judgment questioned by Sol, Phaethon’s father.
Purgatorio Canto XXXII:100-160. The Imperial eagle, the bird of power, is his symbol.
Paradiso Canto IV:1-63. The idea that He and other gods inhered in the planets named after them, led to the influence of the stars, and of Pagan Gods being confused, and both falsely worshipped (Paganism and Astrology).
Paradiso Canto XXII:100-154. The
son of Saturn and father of Mars, by Hera, regarded as
temperate between Saturn’s cold, and
Mars’s heat.
The Byzantine Emperor (527-565AD), husband of Theodora (d. 548) who ended the
draining effects of the war with the Sassanid Persians, enabling him to
concentrate on regaining the western Empire (N.Africa 535, Italy 553, Southern
Spain 554) through his generals Belisarius and Narses. He codified the Roman
Law (Corpus juris civilis). However Italy was lost to the Langobards in
568. Dante looks back to him as providing legal and imperial continuity with
Ancient Rome.
Purgatorio Canto VI:76-151. He is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. He expands on the History of the Empire. He manifests himself to Dante in the second sphere.
The Roman satirist (c60-140AD) who wrote during the reigns of the Emperors Trajan and Hadrian. He was a friend of
Martial and a younger contemporary of Statius
whom he praises in the seventh Satire v 82.
Purgatorio Canto XXII:1-24. He is in Limbo.
One of the Three Fates, the Moerae, whom Erebus and Night conceived, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. Atropos is the smallest but the
most terrible. Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis measures it out, and
Atropos ‘she who cannot be avoided or turned’ shears it. At Delphi only two
fates were worshipped of Birth and Death. Dante here has Lachesis as the
spinner, and Clotho apparently as the measurer, or Clotho is both and the
syntax is misleading.
Purgatorio Canto XXI:1-33. She is mentioned.
Purgatorio Canto XXV:80-108. She is mentioned.
The father of Ulysses.
Inferno Canto XXVI:85-142. He is mentioned indirectly.
A Ghibelline of Bologna, and Podestà of several cities. His sons feuded
with the Geremei after his death in 1259.
Purgatorio Canto XIV:67-123. He is mentioned.
One of the initiators of the murder of Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti, who was
betrothed to a daughter of the Amidei, but broke faith at the instigation of
Gualdrada Donati. In the debate as to whether he should be killed Mosca said
the evil word, ‘A thing done has an end.’ Buondelmonte was murdered, at the
foot of the statue of Mars, on the Ponte Vecchio, in 1215. The family divisions
created the Guelph and Ghibelline factional conflicts.
Inferno Canto VI:64-93. Dante asks after him.
Inferno Canto XXVIII:91-111. He is in the ninth chasm of the eighth circle, as a sower of dissent.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. The
family mentioned and their device of the golden balls.
The knight of the round table in the Arthurian legends who loves Queen Guinevere, Arthur’s consort, illicitly, and indirectly
brings about the destruction of the Round table, and the death of Arthur.
Inferno Canto V:70-142. Reading about
his love corrupts Paolo and Francesca.
See Ugolino.
A Florentine Guelf, Latini (ca1210-1294) politician and philosopher, was
the author of a prose encyclopaedia Li Livres dou Trésor written
in French (he was in exile in France in 1260 after Montaperti) and the Tesoretto, a popular didactic
poem in Italian, containing similar matter, in the form of an allegorical
journey, a kind of Pilgrim’s Progress, that clearly influenced Dante, opening
with the poet lost in a wood of error. An ardent Guelf, he introduced the art
of oratory and the study of political science into Florence. In the Tesoretto
he speaks against the homosexuality that condemns him to Hell. He influenced
and possibly taught Dante.
Inferno Canto XV:1-42. He is in the seventh circle, last ring.
Inferno Canto XV:43-78. He prophesies Dante’s fame, and the enmity of the Florentines against him, as one who tries to revive the ancient Roman order.
Inferno Canto XV:100-124. He recommends his Trésor to Dante, and Dante compares his departure to one running the race at Verona, held on the first Sunday in Lent, for which the prize was a piece of green cloth, a mantle, or palio.
King of Latium, and an ancestor of the Roman people through his daughter
Lavinia the third wife of Aeneas.
Inferno Canto IV:106-129. He is among
the heroes and heroines in Limbo.
The daughter of Coeus the Titan, and the mother by Jupiter, of Apollo and Artemis. She was refused a place on earth to rest by Juno, who was jealous, and found refuge, and bore the divine twins, on the floating island of Delos, in the Aegean, which Jupiter anchored so that she could give birth. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VI 160 et passim.
Purgatorio Canto XX:97-151. She is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto X:64-99. Paradiso Canto XXII:100-154.The mother of the moon-goddess, Artemis-Diana.
Paradiso Canto XXIX:1-66. The mother of the sun and moon.
Paradiso Canto IV:64-114.The Christian martyr of Spanish birth who was
roasted on a gridiron over a fire, in Rome, in 258AD. He was ordained deacon by Pope Sixtus II, and
met his death shortly after the Pope’s own martyrdom. He was said to have
displayed the poor and sick around him as ‘the treasures of the Church’ when
those treasures were demanded of him. He was one of the patron saints of
Florence, with John the Baptist.
The daughter of Latinus and third wife of Aeneas. She was betrothed to Turnus initially. She is an ancestress
of the Roman people.
Inferno Canto IV:106-129. She is among the heroes and heroines in Limbo.
Purgatorio Canto XVII:1-39. She laments the death of her mother Queen Amata, wife of King Latinus, who hanged herself through anger at the death of the hero Turnus, to whom Lavinia was originally betrothed, Lavinia being destined then to marry Aeneas. The fate of Lavinia was part of the reason for the Wars in Latium. See Aeneid xii 595.
Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. She is
mentioned.
Purgatorio Canto XXXII:64-99. His resurrection from the dead is alluded to, John xi, as is the raising of Jairus’s daughter, Luke viii 49. He was the brother of Martha and Mary.
The daughter of Laban, and sister of Rachel,
whom Jacob was deceived into marrying, after he worked
seven years to win Rachel. See Genesis xxix and xxx. She is the fertile sister,
and the symbol of the active life. Her New Testament equivalent is Martha. See
Luke x 38-42.
Purgatorio Canto XXVII:94-114. She appears in Dante’s dream.
A young man of Sestos, separated from his lover Hero, at Abydos, by the
straits of the Hellespont (Dardanelles). He swam across to her repeatedly, and
was ultimately drowned. See Ovid’s Heroides xviii, xix, and Marlowe’s Hero and
Leander.
Purgatorio Canto XXVIII:52-138. He is mentioned.
Inferno Canto XXX:1-48. Juno was angered because of Jupiter’s adultery with Semele, whom she punished, and took vengeance on the house of Cadmus of Thebes, her father. She pursued Ino, Semele’s sister, by driving her husband Athamas mad. He killed their son Learchus, and drove Ino to throw herself over a cliff, with their son Melicertes. Ino and Melicertes became sea-gods, namely Leucothea, the White Goddess, and Palaemon. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses III 261 and IV 519.
The daughter of Thestius, and wife of the Spartan king Tyndareus, who
was raped by Jupiter in the form a swan, and gave birth
to the Gemini, the Twins Castor and Pollux. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VI 109.
Paradiso Canto XXVII:97-148. She
is mentioned.
Jacopo da Lentino ( il Notaio, the Notary), Guittone del Viva known as Fra Guittone,
of Arezzo (1230-1294: one of the Frati Gaudenti) in his first poetic
period, and Bonagiunta were
prominent members of the Sicilian school of Poetry, continued in Central Italy,
based on Provençal traditions. Their style lacked the spontaneity and sweetness
of the dolce stil nuovo developed by Guido Guinicelli of Bologna, Guido Cavalcanti and Dante.
Purgatorio Canto XXIV:34-99. He is mentioned.
The Levites were the priestly tribe, among the ten tribes of Israelites, inhibited from inheriting from others, and given the tithe as an inheritance themselves, in order to dedicate themselves to spiritual matters. See Numbers xviii 20, Deuteronomy xviii 2, Joshua xiii 14.
Purgatorio Canto XVI:97-145. They are mentioned.
Inferno Canto XXI:97-139. A demon guarding the eighth circle, the fifth chasm, of the barrators.
Inferno Canto XXII:31-75. He wants to torment Ciampolo.
The mythological poet, the brother of Orpheus, and son of King Oeagrus
and the Muse Calliope (of epic poetry). Alternatively he was the son of Apollo
and the Muse Urania (astronomy). He was killed by jealous Apollo. He composed
poems honouring Dionysus and a Creation epic. He is said to have invented
melody and rhythm. The lament for him was widespread and is the theme of the
Egyptian song of Maneros. His portrait was carved in the rock on Helicon near
the grove of the Muses. It was claimed tha he was buried at Thebes.
Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among
the group of wise men in Limbo.
Saint Linus, Pope (66-76AD).
Paradiso Canto XXVII:1-66. He died for the faith.
Titus Livius, the Roman historian.
Inferno Canto XXVIII:1-21. He records (xxiii 11, 12) that at the battle of Cannae in 216 BC in the Second Punic war, where Hannibal defeated the Romans, he showed the senate at Carthage, three bushels of gold rings taken from the corpses.
A Guelph noble of Bertinoro, and follower of Rinier da Calboli. He died between
1279 and 1300.
Purgatorio Canto XIV:67-123. He is
mentioned.
One of the Frati Gaudenti, or Jovial Friars, a derisive name for
the Cavalieri di S. Maria (Ordo militae beatae Mariae) founded at
Bologna in 1261, with the approval of Urban IV, to act as mediators, and
protect the weak. It was disbanded due to its laxity. Catelano de’ Catalini (or de’ Malavolti)
c.1210-1285, and Loderingo degli Andalò, a Ghibelline, were called to Florence,
from Bologna, in 1266 to act together as Podestà, and reform the government.
They were accused of hypocrisy and corruption and expelled. The Gardingo
district (Piazza di Firenze) the site of the Uberti Palace, was
destroyed in a rising against the Ghibellines.
Inferno Canto XXIII:82-126. They are in the eighth circle.
A learned Venetian courtier, noted for his breadth of mind, and profundity.
He flourished in the latter half of the thirteenth century.
Purgatorio Canto XVI:25-96. He is among the wrathful.
See Raymond
Berenger.
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, AD
39-65, the Roman writer, born in Cordova in Spain and educated at Rome. He
served under Nero, fell into disfavour, and committed suicide at Nero’s
command. His unfinished epic, the Civil War, or ‘Pharsalia’ after its climactic
battle, was a poetical guide to Dante in his ideas of Roman history.
Inferno Canto IV:64-105. He is among the great poets in Limbo.
Inferno Canto XXIV:61-96. His Pharsalia ix 708 et seq. and 805 provided Dante with the list of snakes.
Inferno Canto XXV:79-151. His
Pharsalia ix 763, and 790, provides the tale of the two soldiers stung by
serpents.
The virgin martyr of Syracuse, in the third Century AD, traditionally associated with light and
vision. She is Dante’s patron Saint (he
had weakened eyesight) and is for him the symbol of Illuminating Grace.
Inferno Canto II:94-120. The Virgin sends her to Beatrice.
Purgatorio Canto IX:34-63. She carries Dante up to the entrance to Purgatory proper, while Virgil follows.
Paradiso Canto XXXII:115-151. She
sits to the right of the Virgin opposite Adam.
The wife of the Roman Collatine, raped by Tarquin, son of Tarquinius
Superbus. A type of the noble, wronged wife. See Shakespeare’s Rape of
Lucrece.
Inferno Canto IV:106-129. She is among the heroes and heroines in Limbo.
Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Mentioned in
the summary of Imperial history.
Purgatorio Canto XXI:1-33. Luke xxiv 13-15 writes of the appearance of Christ at Emmaus after the Resurrection.
Purgatorio Canto XXIX:133-154. He appears in the Divine Pageant.
King of Nemea. Hypsipyle left
his son, Opheltes (later Archemorus) on a river-bank where he was bitten by a
snake. Statius Thebaid iv and v.
Purgatorio Canto XXVI:67-111. He is mentioned.
Macarius the Egyptian (301-391) a disciple of Saint Anthony, one of the monks of the Sinaitic
desert.
Paradiso Canto XXII:1-99. He is in the seventh sphere.
One of the five sons of Mattathias, Judas Maccabeus, ‘The Hammerer’,
resisted the enforced Hellenization of the Jewish people practised under
Antiochus IV of Syria (175-164). He took Jerusalem and re-consecrated the
Temple ( 25 Kislev, 165BC, remembered
by the Chanukah festival) Peace was
achieved in 163BC and the enforced Hellenization halted. He and his brothers
died in the continual fighting until, in 143, Simon, the last survivor expelled
the Syrians. Simon became the first High Priest and civil ruler of the newly
established state, with the title Nasi.
Paradiso Canto XVIII:1-57. He is in the Fifth Sphere of Mars.
Lano Maconi of Siena squandered his fortune, then allowed himself to be
killed at the battle of Pieve del Toppo where the Aretines defeated the Sienese
in 1288.
Inferno Canto XIII:109-129. He is in the seventh circle.
He was a member of the Brigata Spendereccia, the Spendthrift
Brigade, a club founded by twelve wealthy Sienese, in the second half of the
thirteenth century, who vied with each other in squandering their money on
riotous living.
Inferno Canto XXIX:121-139. Other
members of the club are mentioned.
See Pagani.
Mohammed (c570-632AD),
the founder of Islam. He made his ‘Hegira’, the flight to Medina, the city of
the prophet, on 15 June 622, the beginning of the Islamic calendar. He returned
to Mecca on November 1st 630, purified the city, and eliminated idolatry in the
Kaaba, the ancient Arab shrine of the black stone. His teaching spread
throughout Arabia. He died in Medina. Dante treats him as a schismatic within
the Biblical context.
Inferno Canto XXVIII:22-54. He is in the ninth chasm of the eighth circle, with the schismatics.
One of the Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas, and the ocean-nymph Pleione. Their stars form the constellation in the neck of Taurus. She was loved by Jupiter and gave birth to Mercury.
Paradiso Canto XXII:100-154. The mother of Mercury, and a name for Mercury.
A Ghibelline of Bertinoro, and follower of Pier Traversaro. He was captured
with Pier by the people of Faenza in 1170, and was still alive in 1228.
Purgatorio Canto XIV:67-123. He is mentioned.
Inferno Canto XXI:59-96. The chief of the demons in the eighth circle, chasm
five of the barrators.
Inferno Canto XXI:97-139 and Inferno Canto XXIII:127-148. He
misleads Virgil, claiming the causeway was impassable at the sixth chasm.
The wife of Moroello III Malaspina. One
of her sisters, Fiesca, married Alberto of a different Malaspina branch, and
the other, Jacopina, was the wife of Obizzo
II of Este.
Purgatorio Canto XIX:115-145. She is mentioned.
Currado II (d.c.1294) grandson of Currado I, the elder, who married an
illegitimate daughter of Frederick
II and died about 1225.This Conrad’s cousins were Moroello III (d.c.1315) the addressee of Dante’s
third letter accompanied by Canzone xi, and Franceschino who was Dante’s host
(d. between 1313 and 1321) at Sarzana in Lunigiana in the autumn of 1306, less
than seven years, the sun being already in Aries, from the moment of the
Vision. The Malaspini were Ghibellines but Moroello III was a notable
exception. Valdimagra, in Liunigiana, north-west of Tuscany, was part of their
territory. Conrad is mentioned in Boccaccio’s Decameron (ii. 6)
Purgatorio Canto VIII:109-139. He is among the negligent rulers.
Inferno Canto XXIV:130-151. Vanni Fucci’s prophecy covers his involvement in the defeat of the Whites in and around Pistoia in 1302-6. He died c 1315. His wife was Alagia de’ Fieschi.
Elder brother of Paolo, Il Bello, and
husband of Francesca da Rimini. Son
of Malatesta da Verucchio, Lord of Rimini.
Brave but possibly deformed, he slew the unfaithful Francesca along with Paolo
about 1285. According to legend she thought that Paolo was her intended husband
when he stood proxy for his brother in the marriage. Giancotto died in 1304.
Father of Gianciotto and Paolo. Lord of Rimini, ruling from the castle of
Verrucchio (1293-1312)
Inferno Canto XXVII:31-57. He was ‘the old mastiff’, and his son Malatestino ‘the young mastiff’, noted for
their ferocious cruelty. Guelphs, they imprisoned (1295) and murdered, the
Ghibelline leader in Rimini, Montagna de’ Parcitati.
The brother of Gianciotto and Paolo, and son of Malatesta
de Verrucchio, Lord of Rimini. Malatestino ruled Rimini 1312-1317.
Inferno Canto XXVII:31-57. His father was ‘the old mastiff’, and he was
‘the young mastiff’, noted for their ferocious cruelty. Guelphs, they imprisoned
(1295) and murdered, the Ghibelline leader in Rimini, Montagna de’ Parcitati. In 1314 Cesena lost its
freedom and came under Malatestino’s rule.
Inferno Canto XXVIII:55-90. He obtained possession of Fano, and added it to
Rimini. He invited the two chief nobles Guido del Cassero, and Agniello da Carignano to meet him at La Cattolica on
the Adriatic between Fano and Rimini. Their boat was intercepted and they were
drowned off the headland of Focaro, between Fano and La Cattolica. The headland
was notorious for its dangerous winds, so much so that sailors made vows and
prayers for safe passage.
Loved Francesca da Rimini and
was killed by his brother Gianciotto, her
husband, along with her in 1285. He was himself married, to Orabile Beatrice di
Ghiacciuolo, and was known as Il Bello for his personal beauty.
Inferno Canto V:70-142. He weeps while
Francesca tells Dante her story in Limbo.
The Malavicini, Counts of Bagnacavallo, between Imola and Ravenna, were Ghibellines, who in 1249 drove Guido da Polenta and his fellow Guelphs from Ravenna. They were subsequently notorious from their frequent changes of allegiance.
Purgatorio Canto XIV:67-123. Bagnacavallo is mentioned.
‘At these words which the queen spoke to him, the lady of Malehaut
coughed, of a set purpose, and lifted her head that had been bowed.’ Romance
of Lancelot. The moment was Guinevere’s
first open acknowledgement of Lancelot.
Paradiso Canto XVI:1-45. The incident is referred to.
See Tydeus.
Manfred (c1231-1266), the illegitimate son of Emperor Frederick II (died 1250), grandson
of the Emperor Henry VI and his wife
Constance. He married Beatrice
of Savoy whom bore him a daughter Constanza,
who in 1262 married Peter III of
Aragon. Manfred was manus Frederici, the hand of Frederick, heir to his
graces and virtues. In 1258 he usurped the rights of his nephew Conradin and became King of Sicily. He
entered into conflict, as a Ghibelline, with the Papacy of Urban IV, and was again excommunicated
(ultimately by three Popes in succession). Clement
IV invited Charles of Anjou to
Italy, and he was crowned as the alternative King of Sicily. Manfred was
defeated by Charles, on the plain of Grandella, near Benevento (some thirty
miles northeast of Naples) on February 26th 1266. He was killed there, and,
refused Christian rites, was buried under a cairn, on the battlefield, each
surviving soldier adding a stone. His body was disinterred by the Bishop of Cosenza on the Pope’s orders, and
carried across the River Verde (Garigliano) outside the boundary of the Kingdom
of Naples, and the Papal States, so that he might not rest in the usurped
realm, and with the rites used in excommunication. He was a poet and patron of
letters, accused of many things in his lifetime, including incest, by the
Guelphs.
Purgatorio Canto III:103-145. He is among the excommunicated.
See Alberigo.
See Tribaldello.
Petrus Comestor, ‘Peter the Eater of Books’ (d. 1179) who wrote the Historia
Scholastica, a History of the Church from Genesis to Acts, paraphrasing the
Scriptures. He belonged to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris, and became
Chancellor of the University of Paris in 1164.
Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. He is in
the Fourth Sphere of the Sun.
The daughter of Tiresias,
and Apollo’s prophetic priestess, the Pythoness, at Delphi, who married
Rhacius, King of Caria, and bore him (or Apollo)
a son Mopsus who was a famous soothsayer.
Inferno Canto XX:52-99. Her
association with the founding of Mantua, Virgil’s birthplace, is given. Virgil described an alternative version of
Mantua’s founding in Aeneid X198-200.
Purgatorio Canto XXII:94-114. She is in Limbo. One of the people celebrated by Statius in his epic poetry. If this is Manto, then Dante has already placed her among the prophetesses in the Inferno.
Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the Roman consul, who opposed Caesar, pushing for him to be relieved of his military
command when peace was declared, after the Gallic War, and for the disbandment
of the army, and asking that Caesar should lose the privilege of standing for
the consulship in absentia.
Purgatorio Canto VI:76-151. He is mentioned.
Noted for her integrity and nobility. For Dante (and for Chaucer, as Marcia
Catoun) a type of the noble Roman wife. She was Cato’s second wife who
yielded her to his friend Quintus Hortensius. When he died she married Cato
again. Dante’s Convito treats her return to Cato as an allegory of the soul’s
return to God.
Inferno Canto IV:106-129. She is among the heroes and heroines in Limbo.
Purgatorio Canto I:28-84. Virgil tells Cato so, and invokes her love for him.
Purgatorio Canto I:85-111. Separated
from Cato, by the stream that separates Purgatory from Hell, she can no longer
move him.
The second wife of Charles I of Anjou.
Purgatorio Canto VII:64-136. She is mentioned.
The son of Jupiter and Juno. The god of War. He was present at the battle with the Giants.
Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. He is depicted on the roadway.
Paradiso Canto IV:1-63. The idea that He and other gods inhered in the planets named after them, led to the influence of the stars, and of Pagan Gods being confused, and both falsely worshipped in Paganism and Astrology.
Paradiso Canto VIII:85-148. The nominal father of Romulus.
Paradiso Canto IX:127-142. The founder and patron god of Florence, identified by Dante with Satan.
Paradiso Canto XIV:67-139. Dante’s vision of Christ on the Cross.
Paradiso Canto XVI:1-45. Mars is identified with the constellation Leo, though not its astrological ruler, because of Dante’s cluster of associations, around the idea of courage and fortitude, among them the animal, and the planet.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. A statue of Mars stood by the Ponte Vecchio. Buondelmonte was killed at its foot. Mars was the patron of the Florentines in Pagan days and his temple with a highly venerated statue stood on the site of the present Baptistery. When John the Baptist was adopted as the Christian patron saint of Florence, the statue of Mars was moved to a site by the Arno, where it was reverenced as protecting the State though the factionalism in the city was attributed to its influence. When Florence was destroyed by the Goths, the statue fell into the Arno, and it was held that Florence could not be rebuilt from the ruins unless the image was found. It was rescued from the Arno and set on a pillar at the north side of the Ponte Vecchio, when the city was restored by Charlemagne. It was lost in the great flood of 1333 when the Ponte Vecchio was destroyed.
Paradiso Canto XXII:100-154. The hot-blooded son of Jupiter.
Paradiso Canto I:1-36. A satyr of Phrygia who competed with Apollo in a contest of musical skill, pipes against lyre. Marsyas was defeated, by the god. Apollo flayed him for challenging his skill, and Dante asks for the inspirational breath with which Apollo played on that occasion. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VI 382.
Simon de Brie of Tours, Pope from 1281 to 1285 with the name of Martin
IV. He had been papal legate in France and was elected by the influence of Charles of Anjou. He died of eating
too many eels from the lake of Bolsena, stewed in Vernaccia wine. He was buried
at Viterbo.
Purgatorio Canto XXIV:1-33. He is among he gluttonous.
Mary of Brabant was accused by Pierre
de la Brosse, the surgeon and afterwards chamberlain of King Philip III of France, and by
others, of having murdered Louis, Philip’s son by his first wife, with poison,
in 1276. She destroyed Pierre by falsely accusing him of an attempt on her
honour, and of treasonable correspondence with Alfonso X of Castile, Philip’s
enemy. Pierre was hanged for this in 1278.
Purgatorio Canto VI:1-24. She is advised by Dante to repent.
A woman, who devoured her own child, rather than endure famine, during
the terrible siege of Jerusalem, by Titus, the son of Vespasian, in AD70. Titus subsequently razed the city and the
Temple, and robbed the inner sanctuary of its sacred objects, including the
Scroll of the Law.
Purgatorio Canto XXIII:1-36. She
is mentioned.
The Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth, for Dante the
symbol of Divine Mercy. She took on much of the symbolism of the pre-Christian
Great Goddesses, including that of Isis, consort of the Egyptian god Osiris. Isis had a wide following in the
Roman Empire. She was depicted with the infant Horus on her knee, and was the
‘stella maris’ of Mediterranean seamen.
Her name and that of Christ are never mentioned in the Inferno, where
she is ‘un possente’ a powerful spirit.
Inferno Canto II:94-120. She sends Lucia to Beatrice to aid Dante.
Purgatorio Canto III:1-45. The virgin birth brought revealed truth into the world, to increase humanity’s incomplete knowledge.
Purgatorio Canto V:85-129. Buonconte da Montefeltro one of the late-repentants died with her name on his lips.
Purgatorio Canto VIII:1-45. The guardian Angels with burning swords come from Mary’s breast.
Purgatorio Canto X:1-45. Gabriel’s Annunciation to her is sculpted on the frieze, indicating humility as a corrective to pride.
Purgatorio Canto XIII:1-45. The first voice repeats the words Mary spoke at the Marriage feast at Cana. See John ii 3.
Purgatorio Canto XIII:46-84. The shades repeat the Litany of the Saints.
Purgatorio Canto XV:82-145. Her words in the temple to Christ.
Purgatorio Canto XVIII:76-111. After the Annunciation ‘Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda.’ See Luke 1.39.
Purgatorio Canto XX:1-42. ‘And laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn’ See Luke ii 7.
Purgatorio Canto XX:97-151. She is described as the only Bride of the Holy Spirit.
Purgatorio Canto XXII:115-154. The Marriage in Cana, John ii 3, is again referenced. Mary intercedes for mankind in Paradise.
Purgatorio Canto XXV:109-139. At the Annunication Mary said: ‘How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? (virum non cognosco)’ See Luke i 31-34.
Purgatorio Canto XXXIII:1-57. Her vigil at the foot of the Cross, as the mater dolorosa, is mentioned. See John xix 25-27.
Paradiso Canto IV:1-63. She exists with God in the Empyrean.
Paradiso Canto XI:43-117. Her presence at the Crucifixion is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XIII:52-90. The supreme perfection of female Human Nature.
Paradiso Canto XIV:1-66. The Annunciation is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XV:88-148. Called on in childbirth. Madonna del Parto.
Paradiso Canto XXIII:49-87. The Vision of her as the sacred Rose, coupled with the vision of the Apostles as the sacred Lilies.
Paradiso Canto XXIII:88-139. The crowned Queen of Heaven.