Note 269 — CANTO V.

Which absolves, etc.: Which compels whoever is beloved to love in return. Here is the key to Dante’s comparatively lenient estimate of the guilt of Francesca’s sin. See line 39, and Inf. xi. 83. The Church allowed no distinctions with regard to the lost. Dante, for his own purposes, invents a scale of guilt; and in settling the degrees of it he is greatly influenced by human feeling—sometimes by private likes and dislikes. The vestibule of the caitiffs, e.g., is his own creation.