Note 1 — Chapter III

We may compare what Dante puts into the mouth of Manfred in the 'Purgatory' (canto iii.). The great Ghibelline poet here protests against the use of excommunication as a political weapon. His sense of justice will not allow him to believe that God can regard the sentence of priests and pontiffs, actuated by the spite of partisans; yet the examples of Frederick II. and of this Matteo Visconti prove how terrifying, even to the boldest, those sentences continued to be. Few had the resolute will of Galeazzo Pico di Mirandola, who expired in 1499 under the ban of the Church, which he had borne for sixteen years.