Dante: The Divine Comedy
Index IJLM
Iarbas
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.
Icarus
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.
Illuminato, Friar
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.
Importuni
An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned.
Infangato
An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned.
Innocent III, Pope
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.
Ino
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.
Interminei, Alessio degli
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.
Iole
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.
Iphigenia
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.
Iris
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.
Isaiah
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 of Seville, Saint
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.
Ismene
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.
Jacob
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.
James, Saint
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.
James, King of the Balearic Islands
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.
James II, King of Aragon
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.
Jason, the Argonaut
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.
Jason, the high-priest
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.
Jephthah
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.
Jerome, Saint
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.
Joachim of Flora
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.
Joanna, mother of Saint Dominic
Jocasta
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.
John the Baptist, Saint
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.
John the Apostle, Saint
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.
John the Divine, Saint
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.
John XXI, Pope, Peter of Spain
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
John XXII, Pope (1316-1334) A native of Cahors.
Paradiso Canto XXVII:1-66. Indirectly referred to.
Joseph
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.
Joshua
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.
Juba
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.
Judas Iscariot
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.
Jude
The brother of James. Author of the General Epistle of Jude.
Purgatorio Canto XXIX:133-154. He appears in the Divine Pageant
Judith
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.
Julia
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.
Julius Caesar
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.
Juno
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.
Jupiter
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.
Justinian, Emperor
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.
Juvenal
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.
Lachesis
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.
Laërtes
The father of Ulysses.
Inferno Canto XXVI:85-142. He is mentioned indirectly.
Lambertazzi, Fabbro de’
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.
Lamberti, Mosca de’
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.
Lancelot
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.
Lanfranchi, Ghibellines of Pisa
See Ugolino.
Lano, see Maconi
Latini, Brunetto
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.
Latinus
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.
Latona (Leto)
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.
Laurence, Saint
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.
Lavinia
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.
Lazarus
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.
Leah
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.
Leander
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.
Learchus
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.
Leda
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.
Lentino, Jacopo da
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.
Levi, The Tribe of
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.
Libicocco
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.
Linus
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.
Linus, Saint and Pope
Saint Linus, Pope (66-76AD).
Paradiso Canto XXVII:1-66. He died for the faith.
Livy
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.
Lizio di Valbona
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.
Loderingo
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.
Lombardo, Marco
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.
Louis IX, Saint and King of France
See Raymond Berenger.
Lucan
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.
Lucia, Saint Lucy
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.
Lucifer, see Satan
Lucretia
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.
Luke, Saint
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.
Lycurgus
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, Saint
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.
Maccabeus, Judas
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 bythe 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.
Maconi, Lano
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.
Maghinardo
See Pagani.
Mahomet
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.
Maia
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.
Mainardi, Arrigo
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.
Malacoda, a demon
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.
Malaspina, Alagia de’ Fieschi
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.
Malaspina, Corrado
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.
Malaspina, Moroello
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.
Malatesta, Francesca da Polenta, see Francesca da Rimini
Malatesta, Gianciotto
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.
Malatesta, da Verucchio
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.
Malatesta, Malatestino
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.
Malatesta, Paolo il Bello
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.
Malavicini
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.
Malehaut, the Lady of
‘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.
Manalippus
See Tydeus.
Manfred, King of Naples and Sicily
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.
Manfredi, Friar Alberigo de’
See Alberigo.
Manfredi, Tebaldello
See Tribaldello.
Mangiadore, Pietro
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.
Manto
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.
Marcellus
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.
Marcia, wife of Cato of Utica
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.
Marco, see Lombardo
Margaret of Burgundy
The second wife of Charles I of Anjou.
Purgatorio Canto VII:64-136. She is mentioned.
Margaret of Provence, wife of St Louis
Mars
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.
Marsyas
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.
Martin IV, Pope
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, Queen of France
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.
Mary of Jerusalem
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.
Mary the Blessed Virgin
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.
Paradiso Canto XXV:97-139. On the cross, Christ committed her to the care of Saint John. See John xix 26-27. She and Christ, alone, rose to Heaven in body as well as spirit.
Paradiso Canto XXXI:94-142. Dante, with Saint Bernard, gazes at the Virgin enthroned in Heaven.
Paradiso Canto XXXII:1-36. The Virgin heads the descending line, through the Rose, that separates those who believed before Christ, from those who acquired faith after his coming. Below her are the ranks of Hebrew women who were ancestresses of Christ, and types of his Church. Corresponding to her on the other side is John the Baptist.
Paradiso Canto XXXII:85-114. Gabriel in Heaven shows his adoration for her.
Marzucco, see Scornigiani
Mascheroni, Sassol
One of the Florentine Toschi family, killed his nephew, or perhaps his brother, to obtain the inheritance.
Inferno Canto XXXII:40-69. He is in Caïna, in the Ninth Circle.
Matilda
The type of the active life, equivalent to Leah. Historically, Matelda, di Canossa the Grancontessa of Tuscany (1046-1114) fervent supporter of Pope Gregory VII, and succeeding Popes was probably intended. She left her extensive land and castles to the Church. Thanks to her mediation, on January 27, 1077, the Emperor Henry IV, excommunicated in 1075, was received and pardoned by Pope Gregory VII after waiting humbly for three days barefoot in the snow. She may have signifed to Dante the mediation that precedes pardon (his own by Beatrice) and the reconciliation of Empire and Church in their proper spheres.
Purgatorio Canto XXVIII:1-51. Dante meets her.
Purgatorio Canto XXVIII:52-138. She explains features of the Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise to him.
Matthias, Saint
Inferno Canto XIX:88-133. See Acts i 13-26. Matthias was chosen by the Apostles, by lot, to fill the place among the Disciples forfeited by Judas.
Medea
Inferno Canto XVIII:67-99. The daughter of Aeetes, King of Colchis, who fell in love with Jason, helped him with her witchcraft, and was abandoned by him for Creusa. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VII 406.
Medicina, Piero Biancucci da
The family were lords of Medicina, about twenty miles east of Bologna. Pier was deprived of a praetorship by Frederick II, and his family were driven out of Romagna in 1287. He sowed dissent among the rulers of Romagna, setting Polenta and Malatesta against each other. The city of Vercelli in Piedmont and the castle of Marcabò near Ravenna, at the mouth of the Po, are the western and eastern extremities of old Romagna, the plain of Lombardy.
Inferno Canto XXVIII:55-90. He is in the ninth chasm of the sowers of discord.
Medusa
The daughter of Phorcys, she is one of the Gorgons. The other two are Euryale and Stheino. Medusa was raped by Neptune(Poseidon) in the temple of Minerva(Athene), who changed her to a winged monster with snakes for hair, her gaze turning anyone who looked at her to stone. Perseus decapitated her, looking at her reflection in his shield, and used her head to turn Atlas to stone. Pegasus the winged horse and Chrysaor a warrior sprang from her blood. She symbolises obduracy, delaying repentance.
Inferno Canto IX:34-63. The Erinyes (Furies) invoke her, in order to be able to turn Dante to stone (harden his heart).
Melchisedek
The king and high-priest who received Abraham at Salem (Jerusalem) and blessed him. Abraham paid him a tithe of his spoils of victory. See Genesis xiv 18-24.
Paradiso Canto VIII:85-148. The type of the priest.
Meleager
The son of Oeneus, King of Calydon and Althaea daughter of Thestius. His life depended on a brand of wood that was burning in the fire at his birth, and that was rescued by his mother. He killed the Calydonian Boar and gave the skin to Atalanta (of Calydon) and when his uncles took it from her, killed them. Althaea burned the brand to revenge her son’s murder of her two brothers. He then died as it was consumed. One of his sisters was Deianira. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VIII 445-525.
Purgatorio Canto XXV:1-79. He is mentioned.
Melicertes
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.
Melissus
The Greek philosopher, considered by Aristotle an example of the powers of false-reasoning.
Paradiso Canto XIII:91-142. He is mentioned.
Mercury
The messenger God, son of Jupiter and Maia, one of the Pleiades.
Purgatorio Canto XXXII:64-99. He lulled Argus to sleep, and killed him at the request of Jupiter.
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 XXII:100-154. Called Maia, as the son of Maia.
Metellus
Purgatorio Canto IX:106-145. A follower of Pompey, who tried to protect the Roman Treasury in the Temple of Saturn on the Tarpeian (Captoline) Hill, from Caesar’s plundering of it. Lucan in Pharsalia iii 153-168 stresses the sound of the Temple gates being opened.
Michael, theArchangel
Inferno Canto VII:1-39. He warred against the dragon of Revelation XII, ‘that old serpent called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world’. Satan fell through pride, and is the great falsifier, deceiver, and adulterator of God’s universe. I take that as the sense of ‘superbo strupo’.
Purgatorio Canto XIII:46-84. The shades repeat the Litany of the Saints.
Paradiso Canto IV:1-63. He is shown with human form though beyond the human.
Michel, see Zanche
Michal
Purgatorio Canto X:46-72. The daughter of Saul who saw King David leaping and dancing and despised him in her heart. See Second Samuel vi 16.
Midas
The King of Phrygia, son of Gordius and Cybele, granted a wish by Bacchus, for helping his companion Silenus, and who wished that everything he touched might turn to gold. He soon regretted his greed. He was also given ass’s ears for challenging Tmolus’s judgement which preferred Apollo’s lyre to Pan’s pipes. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses XI 106 et seq.
Purgatorio Canto XX:97-151. He is mentioned.
Minos
The mythical King of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa, brother of Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon, lawgiver and builder of the Labyrinth at Cnossus, Daedalus being the architect. He was appointed by Zeus as one of the three judges of the dead, with Rhadamanthys and Aeacus, and lived in the Elysian Fields in the Underworld. He ruled over ninety Cretan cities and controlled navigation of the Mediterranean. He is the judge of the infernal regions in Virgil’s Aeneid and is for Dante a symbol of the sinner’s guilty conscience.
Inferno Canto V:1-51. Inferno Canto XIII:79-108. He sentences the sinners in Hell.
Inferno Canto XX:31-51. He is already in Hell to receive Amphiaraüs.
Inferno Canto XXVII:58-136. He coils his tail eight times, to indicate that Guido da Montefeltro should be sent to the eighth chasm of the eighth circle.
Inferno Canto XXIX:100-120. He is an infallible judge.
Purgatorio Canto I:28-84. Virgil is not bound by him, being in Limbo, not Dis.
Paradiso Canto XIII:1-51. Ariadne was his daughter.
Minotaur
Asterion, the bull-headed son produced by Minos’s wife Pasiphaë’s mating with ‘a white bull from the sea’, sacred to Poseidon. He was imprisoned in the Labyrinth of Cnossos, and killed by Theseus, who was helped by Asterion’s half-sister Ariadne, daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë. He is for Dante, the type of bestiality, violence and brutishness. (See also Ovid’s Metamorphoses VIII 132-169)
Inferno Canto XII:1-27. He guards the descent to the seventh circle.
Monaldi, of Orvieto
Purgatorio Canto VI:76-151. Feuded with the Filippeschi.
Montagna, see Parcitati
Montagues, Montecchi of Verona
Purgatorio Canto VI:76-151. Feuded with the Capulets, see Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for a fictitious re-creation of the feuding.
Montefeltro, Buonconte da
The son of Guido da Montefeltro, and like him a Ghibelline leader. He was in command of the Aretines when they were defeated at Campaldino by the Florentine Guelphs on June 11th 1289, and was killed there. Dante is supposed to have taken part on the Florentine side. Giovanna was his wife. Campaldino is in the upper Val d’ Arno, or district of Casentino, bounded by the mountains of Pratomagno to the west and the Apennine chain on the east. It lies between Poppi and Bibiena, where the River Archiano, which rises in the Apennines, above the Monastery of Camaldoli, flows into the Arno, about an hour’s walk from the battlefield. The mist and fog is a common feature of the valley.
Purgatorio Canto V:85-129. He is among the late repentant killed by violence.
Montefeltro, Guido da
The Lord of Urbino, and one of the great Ghibelline captains. He became a Franciscan friar in 1296. Boniface VIII summoned him from his retreat in 1297 to consult with him about the razing of Palestrina (Penestrino) twenty-five miles east of Rome, held by the Colonna family, who were in rebellion against the Church. Guido, finding it impregnable, advised Boniface to promise immunity and then break it, inducing the Colonna to surrender, (in September 1298), then razing the fortress to the ground. Dante regarded Guido highly for his entering the Franciscan order (See his Convivio iv 28). Guido was born in 1223 and died in 1298. His son Buonconte appears in the Purgatorio.
Inferno Canto XXVII:58-136. He is in the eighth circle.
Montferrat, Marquis William of
See William.
Montfort, Guy de
The son of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. He avenged the death of his father at the battle of Evesham (1265) where Edward (later Edward I) defeated the English barons, when, in 1271, while vicar general of Tuscany he murdered Henry, his cousin, the son of Richard Earl of Cornwall, the nephew of the English king, in the church of San Silvestro at Viterbo. Henry’s heart was placed in a gold casket, and set on a pillar by London Bridge, or in the hand of his statue in Westminster Abbey.
Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He is placed in the seventh circle of the violent, first ring.
Mordecai
Ahasuerus, the Persian King, enriched Haman, until he was accused by Esther of intending to take the life of Mordecai. Haman was executed in Mordecai’s place. See Esther iii-viii.
Purgatorio Canto XVII:1-39. He is mentioned.
Mordred
The nephew and son of King Arthur, who attempted to usurp his kingdom. In the last battle Arthur pierced Mordred with his lance, at the same time receiving his own death-wound. According to an Old French version of the theme, which differs from Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, ‘after the lance was withdrawn a ray of sunlight passed through the wound...’
Inferno Canto XXXII:40-69. He is in Caïna, in the Ninth Circle.
Moronto, brother of Cacciaguida
Paradiso Canto XV:88-148. He is mentioned.
Mosca, see Lamberti
Moses
The lawgiver, who led Israel out of Egypt. See the Bible Exodus ii. The type of the faithful man who does not swerve from service to the God of Israel.
Inferno Canto IV:1-63. Christ takes his spirit from Limbo into Paradise.
Purgatorio Canto XXXII:64-99. At the Transfiguration, see Matthew xviii 1-8, Christ shone like the sun in white raiment, and Moses and Elias appeared talking with him.
Paradiso Canto IV:1-63. He exists with God in the Empyrean.
Paradiso Canto XXIV:115-154. He is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XXVI:1-69. The Lord says to Moses ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee’ Exodus xxxiii 19. The Vulgate says ego ostendam omne bonum tibi.
Paradiso Canto XXXII:115-151. He sits to the left of Adam in Heaven.
Mozzi, Andrea de’
Andrea dei Mozzi, was made Bishop of Florence in 1287 and transferred to the see of Vicenza on the River Bacchiglione, in 1295, by Pope Boniface VIII. He died there the following year. Servus servorum Dei was one of the Popes official titles, from Gregory I (590-604) onwards.
Inferno Canto XV:100-124. He is in Hell for sodomy.
Mozzi, Rocco de’
Inferno Canto XIII:130-151. Possibly the speaker is Rocco, who hanged himself, as a bankrupt, or alternatively Lotto degli Agli.
Muses
The Nine Muses, the daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory), the patronesses of the liberal arts. Their names were Clio (History), Melpomene (Tragedy), Thalia (Comedy), Euterpe (Lyric poetry), Terpsichore (Dance), Calliope (Epic poetry), Erato (Love poetry), Urania (Astronomy, and the Music of the Spheres), and Polyhymnia (Sacred Song). Calliope, the mother of Orpheus, is the eldest sister of the Muses. They lived on Mount Helicon and Mount Parnassus, where their sacred springs were Aganippe and Hippocrene on the first, and Castalia on the second. They are ‘doctae sorores’ the ‘learned sisters’. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses V.
Inferno Canto XXXII:1-39. Dante invokes their help.
Purgatorio Canto I:1-27. Dante declares his allegiance to them.
The Muses took up the challenge issued by the nine daughters of King Pierus, the Emathides, also called the Pierides, a name for the Muses themselves, from Pieria, the earliest site of their worship. The Emathides were defeated and were turned into magpies. Calliope lead the singing. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses V 300 etc.
Purgatorio Canto XXII:94-114. They (and their mountain Parnassus) are mentioned, as the foster-mothers of the pagan poets.
Purgatorio Canto XXIX:37-61. Dante invokes the Muses, and the streams of Helicon, and calls on Urania.
Paradiso Canto II:1-45. The Muses show the poet his means of guiding himself.
Paradiso Canto XII:1-36. They are mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XVIII:58-99. The fountain of Hippocrene on Helicon, sprang from a blow of the hoof of Pegasus, the winged horse, born from the blood of Medusa. He and his brother Chrysaor the warrior were sired by Neptune. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses IV 768, V 257.
Paradiso Canto XXIII:49-87. Dante mentions Polyhymnia.
Myrrha
Inferno Canto XXX:1-48. The daughter of Cinyras who conceived an incestuous passion for her father, and in darkness, using an assumed name, entered his bed. She conceived Adonis, and was changed into the myrrh-tree from which Adonis was born. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses X 489.