Note 423 — CANTO XIII.

For I am he, etc.: The speaker is Pier delle Vigne, who from being a begging student of Bologna rose to be the Chancellor of the Emperor Frederick II., the chief councillor of that monarch, and one of the brightest ornaments of his intellectual court. Peter was perhaps the more endeared to his master because, like him, he was a poet of no mean order. There are two accounts of what caused his disgrace. According to one of these he was found to have betrayed Frederick’s interests in favour of the Pope’s; and according to the other he tried to poison him. Neither is it known whether he committed suicide; though he is said to have done so after being disgraced, by dashing his brains out against a church wall in Pisa. Dante clearly follows this legend. The whole episode is eloquent of the esteem in which Peter’s memory was held by Dante. His name is not mentioned in Inferno, but yet the promise is amply kept that it shall flourish on earth again, freed from unmerited disgrace. He died about 1249.