Our pilgrim, Dante, has been talking to Pope Nicholas III, stuck upside-down in a hole in the third evil pocket of the eighth circle of Inferno, the vast landscape of the fraudulent. He's learned that Nicholas III was a master of nepotism and is eagerly awaiting the arrival of other popes, even ones from Avignon.
And our pilgrim can take it no more! Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore the longest speech from our pilgrim yet, a diatribe about church corruption that sees the end of the world in the offing. The popes go whoring and the world just might go smash.
Here are the segments of this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:45] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XIX, lines 88 - 117. If you'd like to read along, you can find this translation on my website, markscarbrough.com.
[03:44] Some introductory remarks about this podcast episode.
[05:15] The Biblical references in the pilgrim Dante's rant: the keys to the kingdom (Matthew 16: 13 - 20), the apostles' choosing Matthias after Judas Iscariot dies (The Acts Of The Apostles 1: 21 - 26), and the whore of Babylon (The Apocalypse of St. John [aka "Revelations"] 17: 1 - 5).
[16:38] The historical references in the rant: Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily and Naples; and Emperor Constantine The Great with his infamous "donation."
[24:23] The thematic echoes in the rant: back to the fourth circle of avarice in INFERNO, Canto VII; and even further back to the question of "folly" from INFERNO, Canto II.
[30:37] The folly of the rant: There are all sorts of garbled bits in this passage, including corrupted passages from the Bible's New Testament. Is this the folly of the pilgrim or of the poet?
[34:17] Reading the passage one more time, now that you know the details.