N. 30. - Inscription in S. GIOVANNI on the pavement at the side of Via Cerretani:
Reading edition
“Nel mio bel San Giovanni.” DANTE, Inferno, XIX, 17. In my beloved Saint John’s dome.
In the third gulf are punished those who have been guilty of simony; they are fixed with their heads downwards in certain apertures, so that only their legs appear, and on the soles of their feet are seen burning flames.—Dante says: the holes were as wide “as those fonts in St. John’s dome, destined to hold the baptismal streams,” one of which he had broken some years ago, to save a child, that had fallen in.
His enemies having represented the motive of his breaking the font maliciously, he mentions the fact here, to prove his innocence.
... “and one of which, not many years ago, I broke for some one, who was drowning in it; Be this a seal, all men to undeceive!”