him with the allusion to the Santo Volto.
48. The Santo Volto, or Holy Face, is a crucifix still preserved in the Cathedral of Lucca, and held in great veneration by the people. The tradition is that it is the work of Nicodemus, who sculptured it from memory.
See also Sacchetti, Nov. 73, in which a preacher mocks at the Santo Volto in the church of Santa Croce at Florence.
49. The Serchio flows near Lucca. Shelley, in a poem called The Boat, on the Serchio, describes it as a "torrent fierce,"
"Which fervid from its mountain source,
Shallow, smooth, and strong, doth come;
Swift as fire, tempestuously
It sweeps into the affrighted sea.
In morning's smile its eddies coil,
Its billows sparkle, toss, and boil,
Torturing all its quiet light
Into columns fierce and bright."
63. Canto IX. 22:—
"True is it once before I here below
Was conjured by that pitiless Erictho,
Who summoned back the shades unto their bodies."
95. A fortified town on the Arno, in the Pisan territory. It was besieged by the troops of Florence and Lucca in 1289, and capitulated. As the garrison marched out under safe-guard, they were terrified by the shouts of the crowd, crying: "Hang them! hang them!" In this crowd was Dante, "a youth of twenty-five," says Benvenuto da Imola.
110. Along the circular dike that separates one Bolgia from another.
111. This is a falsehood, as all the bridges over the next Bolgia are broken. See Canto XXIII. 140.
112. At the close of the preceding Canto the time is indicated as being an hour after sunrise. Five hours later would be noon, or the scriptural sixth hour, the hour of the Crucifixion. Dante understands St. Luke to say that Christ died at this hour. Convito, IV. 23: "Luke says that it was about the sixth hour when he died; that is, the culmination of the day." Add to the "one thousand and two hundred sixty-six years," the thirty-four of Christ's life on earth, and it gives the year 1300, the date of the Infernal Pilgrimage.
114. Broken by the earthquake at the time of the Crucifixion, as the rock leading to the Circle of the Violent, Canto XII. 45:—
"And at that moment this primeval rock
Both here and elsewhere made such overthrow."
As in the next Bolgia Hypocrites are punished, Dante couples them with the Violent, by making the shock of the earthquake more felt near them than elsewhere.
125. The next crag or bridge, traversing the dikes and ditches.
137. See Canto XVII. 75.
