Note 2 — A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Francesca calls the book a Galeotto and him who wrote it a Galeotto, because ‘Galeotto’ was then the synonym for ‘pander’. Galeotto (Gallehault) was he who brought Lancilotto and Ginevra to their first sin, according to the Tavola Rotonda, a romance popular in Francesca’s time. Dante had none of the pretty and complex meanings imputed to him by Landor. Dante, the insistent moralist, simply intended a simple warning against dangerous reading; he was in this obedient to a Bull (in 1313) whereby the Pope condemned La Tavola Rotonda—one of the earliest books to be thus banned.