Note 713 — CANTO XXVII.

Thou didst not think, etc.: Guido had forgot that others could reason besides the Pope. With regard to the inefficacy of the Papal absolution an old commentator says, following Origen: ‘The Popes that walk in the footsteps of Peter have this power of binding and loosing; but only such as do so walk.’ But on Dante’s scheme of what fixes the fate of the soul absolution matters little to save, or priestly curses to damnify. See Purg. iii. 133. It is unfeigned repentance that can help a sinner even at the last; and it is remarkable that in the case of Buonconte, the gallant son of this same Guido, the infernal angel who comes for him as he expires complains that he has been cheated of his victim by one poor tear. See Purg. v. 88, etc. Why then is no indulgence shown in Dante’s court to Guido, who might well have been placed in Purgatory and made to have repented effectually of this his last sin? That Dante had any personal grudge against him we can hardly think. In the Fourth Book of the Convito (written, according to Fraticelli, in 1297), he calls him ‘our most noble Guido Montefeltrano;’ and praises him as one of the wise and noble souls that refuse to run with full sails into the port of death, but furl the sails of their worldly undertakings, and, relinquishing all earthly pleasures and business, give themselves up in their old age to a religious life. Either, then, he sets Guido here in order that he may have a modern false counsellor worthy to be ranked with Ulysses; or because, on longer experience, he had come to reprobate more keenly the abuse of the Franciscan habit; or, most likely of all, that he might, even at the cost of Guido, load the hated memory of Boniface with another reproach.