{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/dante/pu11.htm","path":"chr/dante/pu11.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/dante/pu11.htm","text":"Sacred Texts\u00a0\n Christianity Index\u00a0\n Divine Comedy Index\u00a0\n Previous: Purgatory Canto 10\u00a0\n Next: Purgatory Canto 12\u00a0\n \n \n \n Canto XI\n \n \n Argument\n \n \n After a prayer uttered by the spirits, who were spoken of in the last\n Canto, Virgil inquires the way upward, and is answered by one, who declares\n himself to have been Omberto, son of the Count of Santafiore. Next our Poet\n distinguishes Oderigi, the illuminator, who discourses on the vanity of\n worldly fame, and points out to him the soul of Provenzano Salvani.\n \n \n O Thou Almighty Father! who dost make\n The heavens Thy dwelling, not in bounds confined,\n But that, with love intenser, there Thou view'st\n Thy primal effluence; hallow'd be thy name:\n Join, each created being, to extol\n \n \n Thy might; for worthy humblest thanks and praise\n Is Thy blest Spirit. May Thy kingdom's peace\n Come unto us; for we, unless it come,\n With all our striving, thither tend in vain.\n As, of their will, the Angels unto Thee\n Tender meet sacrifice, circling Thy throne\n With loud hosannas; so of theirs be done\n By saintly men on earth. Grant us, this day,\n Our daily manna, without which he roams\n Through this rough desert retrograde, who most\n Toils to advance his steps. As we to each\n Pardon the evil done us, pardon Thou\n Benign, and of our merit take no count.\n 'Gainst the old adversary, prove Thou not\n Our virtue, easily subdued; but free\n From his incitements, and defeat his wiles.\n This last petition, dearest Lord! is made\n Not for ourselves; since that were needless now;\n But for their sakes who after us remain.\"\n \n \n Thus for themselves and us good speed imploring,\n Those spirits went beneath a weight like that\n We sometimes feel in dreams; all, sore beset,\n But with unequal anguish; wearied all;\n Round the first circuit; purging as they go\n The world's gross darkness off. In our behoof\n If their vows still be offer'd, what can here\n For them be vow'd and done by such, whose wills\n Have root of goodness in them? Well beseems\n That we should help them wash away the stains\n They carried hence; that so, made pure and light,\n They may spring upward to the starry spheres.\n \n \n \"Ah! so may mercy - temper'd justice rid\n Your burdens speedily; that ye have power\n To stretch your wing, which e'en to your desire\n Shall lift you; as ye show us on which hand\n Toward the ladder leads the shortest way.\n And if there be more passages than one,\n Instruct us of that easiest to ascend:\n For this man, who comes with me, and bears yet\n The charge of fleshly raiment Adam left him,\n Despite his better will, but slowly mounts.\"\n From whom the answer came unto these words,\n Which my guide spake, appear'd not; but 'twas said:\n \"Along the bank to rightward come with us;\n And ye shall find a pass that mocks not toil\n Of living man to climb: and were it not\n That I am hinder'd by the rock, wherewith\n This arrogant neck is tamed, whence needs I stoop\n My visage to the ground; him, who yet lives,\n Whose name thou speak'st not, him I fain would view;\n To mark if e'er I knew him, and to crave\n His pity for the fardel that I bear.\n I was of Latium;[1] of a Tuscan born,\n A mighty one: Aldobrandesco's name\n My sire's, I know not if ye e'er have heard.\n My old blood and forefathers' gallant deeds\n Made me so haughty, that I clean forgot\n The common mother; and to such excess\n Wax'd in my scorn of all men, that I fell,\n Fell therefore; by what fate, Siena's sons.\n Each child in Campagnatico, can tell.\n I am Omberto: not me, only, pride\n Hath injured, but my kindred all involved\n In mischief with her. Here my lot ordains\n Under this weight to groan, till I appease\n God's angry justice, since I did it not\n Amongst the living, here amongst the dead.\"\n \n \n [1: \"I was of Latium.\" Omberto, the son of Guglielmo Aldobrandesco,\n Count of Santafiore, in the territory of Siena. His arrogance provoked his\n countrymen to such a pitch of fury against him that he was murdered by them at\n Campagnatico.]\n \n \n Listening I bent my visage down: and one\n (Not he who spake) twisted beneath the weight\n That urged him, saw me, knew me straight, and call'd;\n Holding his eyes with difficulty fix'd\n Intent upon me, stooping as I went\n Companion of their way. \"O!\" I exclaim'd,\n \"Art thou not Oderigi?[2] art not thou\n Agobbio's glory, glory of that art\n Which they of Paris call the limner's skill?\"\n \n \n [2: The illuminator, or miniature painter, a friend of Giotto and\n Dante.]\n \n \n \"Brother!\" said he, \"with tints, that gayer smile,\n \n \n Bolognian Franco's[3] pencil lines the leaves.\n His all the honour now; my light obscured.\n In truth, I had not been thus courteous to him\n The whilst I lived, through eagerness of zeal\n For that pre - eminence my heart was bent on.\n Here, of such pride, the forfeiture is paid.\n Nor were I even here, if, able still\n To sin, I had not turn'd me unto God.\n O powers of man! how vain your glory, nipt\n E'en in its height of verdure, if an age\n Less bright succeed not. Cimabue thought\n To lord it over painting's field; and now\n The cry is Giotto's,[4] and his name eclipsed.\n Thus hath one Guido from the other[5] snatch'd\n The letter'd prize: and he, perhaps, is born,\n Who shall drive either from their nest. The noise\n Of worldly fame is but a blast of wind,\n That blows from diverse points, and shifts its name,\n Shifting the point it blows from. Shalt thou more\n Live in the mouths of mankind, if thy flesh\n Part shrivel'd from thee, than if thou hadst died\n Before the coral and the pap were left;\n Or e'er some thousand years have past? and that\n Is, to eternity compared, a space\n Briefer than is the twinkling of an eye\n To the heaven's slowest orb. He there, who treads\n So leisurely before me, far and wide\n Through Tuscany resounded once; and now\n Is in Siena scarce with whispers named:\n There was he sovereign, when destruction caught\n The maddening rage of Florence, in that day\n Proud as she now is loathsome. Your renown\n Is as the herb, whose hue doth come and go;\n \n \n [3: Franco of Bologna, who is said to have been a pupil of\n Oderigi's.]\n \n \n [4: \"The cry is Giotto's.\" In Giotto we have a proof at how early a\n period the fine arts were encouraged in Italy. His talents were discovered by\n Cimabue, while he was tending sheep for his father in the neighborhood of\n Florence, and he was afterward patronized by Pope Benedict XI and Robert, King\n of Naples; and enjoyed the society and friendship of Dante, whose likeness he\n has transmitted to posterity.]\n \n \n [5: Guido Cavalcanti, the friend of our Poet, had eclipsed the\n literary fame of Guido Guinicelli. See also the twenty - sixth Canto.]\n \n \n And his might withers it, by whom it sprang\n Crude from the lap of earth.\" I thus to him:\n \"True are thy sayings: to my heart they breathe\n The kindly spirit of meekness, and allay\n What tumours rankle there. But who is he,\n Of whom thou spakest but now?\" - \"This,\" he replied,\n \"I Provenzano. He is here, because\n He reach'd with grasp presumptuous, at the sway\n Of all Siena. Thus he still hath gone,\n Thus goeth never - resting, since he died.\n Such is the acquittance render'd back of him,\n Who, in the mortal life, too much hath dared.\"\n I then: \"If soul, that to life's verge delays\n Repentance, linger in that lower space,\n Nor hither mount, (unless good prayers befriend),\n Or ever time, long as it lived, be past;\n How chanced admittance was vouchsafed to him?\"\n \n \n \"When at his glory's topmost height,\" said he,\n \"Respect of dignity all cast aside,\n Freely he fix'd him on Siena's plain,\n A suitor[6] to redeem his suffering friend,\n Who languish'd in the prison - house of Charles;\n Nor, for his sake, refused through every vein\n To tremble. More I will not say; and dark,\n I know, my words are; but thy neighbours soon\n Shall help thee to a comment on the text.\n This is the work, that from these limits freed him.\"\n \n \n [6: Provenzano Salvani, for the sake of one of his friends who was\n detained in captivity by Charles I of Sicily, personally supplicated the\n people of Siena to contribute the ransom required by the King; and this act of\n self - abasement atoned for his general ambition. He fell at Vald' Elsa, where\n the Florentines discomfited the Sienese in June, 1269.]","title":"Pu11","type":"page"}