Pongono il segno, ed esso lo mi addita.
Dell' anime che Dio s'ha fatte amiche
Dice Isaia che ciascuna vestita
Nella sua terra fia di doppia vesta,
E la sua terra e questa dolce vita.
E il tuo fratello assai vie piu digesta,
La dove tratta delle bianche stole,
Questa rivelazion ci manifesta."
34. Chapter XXVI. p. 206. The church of San Sisto is on the Via Appia within the city ; it was given by Honorius III. to St. Dominic in the thirteenth century, and is now occupied by Dominican nuns. The Via Praenestina runs from the Porta Maggiore (Porta Praenestina) to Palestrina. ['Way that is called Appia' replaced by 'Appian Way' in online text].
35. Ibid. p. 207. Portua (more properly Portus, the Portus Traiani ) is the modern Porto, an important commercial seaport under the Empire, but now a village two miles from the sea. ['Portua' replaced by 'Portus' in online text]
36. Ibid, p. 208. Patricii Narsae temporibus. The Narses meant is evidently the famous Armenian eunuch who reconquered Italy from the Goths and governed Rome for the Empire from 552 to 567 ; not the Narses, a contemporary of St. Gregory, to whom several of the Pope's letters are addressed. ['Narsus' replaced by 'Narses' in online text]
37. Chapter XXVII. p. 210. Centumcellae is the present Civita Vecchia. "Earl" is the translator's equivalent of comes, or "count," the chief military officer of a district. St. Gregory relates this story in his Homilies (Lib. II. Homilia 36). ['Earl' replaced by 'Count' in online text.]
38. Luke 16, 24.
39. Matt. 25, 41.
40. Chapter XXX. p. 213. Julianus hujus Romanae Ecclesiae secundus defensor has already been mentioned, Bk. I. chap. 10. He was the second of this name to hold the office of "defender." Cf . note on Bk. I. chap. 4.
41. Ibid. p. 214. Theodoricus (Thiuda reiks), whom we call Theodoric the Goth, was born in 454, invaded Italy as the delegate of the Emperor Zeno in 489, and, by his capture of Ravenna from Odoacer in 493, founded the short-lived Ostrogothic kingdom. In 500, he came to Rome as a pacific and beneficent sovereign, hailed by the Romans as a new Trajan, pledging himself to maintain the Roman laws for the benefit of the Roman People. He restored the walls and decreed the preservation of the monuments of the city, "King of the Goths and Romans in Italy," he ruled nominally as the representative of the Emperor at Byzantium. Himself an Arian, Theodoric during the greater part of his reign treated Arians and Catholics with the same impartial justice as he did Goths and Romans in the political field. But the reconciliation between the Byzantine Court and the Holy See in 519, the consequent tendency of the Roman Senate towards Constantinople rather than towards Ravenna, and the increasing bitterness between Arians and Catholics both in East and West, gradually alienated the King from his Catholic and Roman subjects, and he finally degenerated into a religious persecutor and suspicious tyrant. The philosopher Boethius was tortured to death by his orders in 524 or 525 ; Symmachus, the Head of the Senate, was executed in 525 ; and Pope John I. ( cf, above, Bk. III. chap. 2) died in the King's dungeons at Ravenna in May, 526. Theodoric followed his victims to the grave on August 30, 526, the day on which, according to his decree, all the Catholic churches in Italy were to have been surrendered to the Arians. At some uncertain date, his body was cast out of his magnificent tomb at Ravenna : Agnellus of Ravenna, who wrote in the first half of the ninth century, states that it had been done before his time ( Liber Pontificalis, in Migne, P.L. cvi. col. 535) ; but there seems no foundation for the assertion of Fra Salimbene, the thirteenth-century chronicler of Parma ( Cronica, ed. Holder-Egger, pp. 209, 210), that it was St. Gregory the Great himself who ordered this work of desecration to be carried out. The crater mentioned in this unpleasant legend is either that of Vulcano or Stromboli, two of the Lipari islands.
42. Chapter XXXI. p. 215. San Lorenzo in Damaso, the basilica of St. Lawrence near the site of Pompey's theatre, was founded by Pope St. Damasus (366-384).
43. Chapter XXXII. p. 216. "Courtier" is here, as before, the translator's equivalent for curialis. Cf. above, note on Bk. II. chap. II.
44. Luke 16, 19-25.
45. Chapter XXXIII. p, 219. "For seeing that they do in that place with unspeakable brightness (common to all) behold God, what is there that they know not, that know him who knoweth all things." Cf Dante, Par. xv. 55-63, xxi. 82-102.
46. Chapter XXXV. p. 219. A "natural brother" ( germanus frater ) means a brother according to the flesh, not merely a fellow-monk.
47. Psalm 118, 19-20.
48. Ibid. p. 220. Optio was not Stephen's name, but his military rank. The right reading is not cui cognomen Optio fait, "whose surname was Optio," but qui in numero optio fuit, "who in rank was adjutant."
49. Ibid. p. 221. This allegorical ship is possibly the ultimate source of the boat that conveys the souls of the redeemed from the mouth of the Tiber in Dante's Purgatorio.
50. John 14, 2.