Note 544 — CANTO XIX.

A Pastor from the West: Boniface died in 1303, and was succeeded by Benedict XI., who in his turn was succeeded by Clement V., the Pastor from the West. Benedict was not stained with simony, and so it is Clement that is to relieve Boniface; and he is to come from the West, that is, from Avignon, to which the Holy See was removed by him. Or the reference may simply be to the country of his birth. Elsewhere he is spoken of as ‘the Gascon who shall cheat the noble Henry’ of Luxemburg (Parad. xvii. 82).—This passage has been read as throwing light on the question of when the Inferno was written. Nicholas says that from the time Boniface arrives till Clement relieves him will be a shorter period than that during which he has himself been in Inferno, that is to say, a shorter time than twenty years. Clement died in 1314; and so, it is held, we find a date before which the Inferno was, at least, not published. But Clement was known for years before his death to be ill of a disease usually soon fatal. He became Pope in 1305, and the wonder was that he survived so long as nine years. Dante keeps his prophecy safe—if it is a prophecy; and there does seem internal evidence to prove the publication of the Inferno to have taken place long before 1314.—It is needless to point out how the censure of Clement gains in force if read as having been published before his death.