Who He Is
Guido da Montefeltro is the counselor who speaks from inside a flame, in the same eighth ditch where Ulysses burns, and his speech first arrives as confused noise, like that of the bronze bull that bellowed with the cries of its own maker. He was a man of arms who later became a Franciscan friar, from the mountains between Urbino and the sources of the Tiber, and what introduces him to the poem is the question he asks Virgil, whom he heard speaking Lombard, about Romagna, the neighboring land. Guido says who he is only after a reckoning, and the reckoning is what defines him: he weighs the interlocutor, concludes that no one alive will repeat what he hears, and only then speaks. He is the fox who describes himself by what he was, the lucidity of one who knows exactly what he did and the pride of one who still counts it as merit, and the man whom the poem condemns for a counsel given in exchange for an absolution that does not exist. Canto XXVII of the Inferno is the only canto in which he appears.
Trajectory
When the flame of Ulysses and Diomedes quiets and moves away with Virgil's leave, another that came behind makes Dante turn his eyes to its summit. The voice takes shape as words as the tip of the flame shakes them. Guido heard Virgil dismiss Ulysses in Lombard and wants to know whether the Romagnols, the neighbors of his land, are at peace or at war. Virgil tells Dante to speak, because that one is Italian, as you are, and the question is about the present. Dante surveys the cities from top to bottom, from Ravenna to Cesena, says that no war was open when he left, and asks him to say who he is. Guido agrees to answer only after stating the reasoning that allows it, which the poem leaves in view: if he thought he was answering someone who would return to the world, the flame would not stir again, but, since no one has returned alive from the depths, he answers without fear of infamy. He then tells who he was: a man of arms, and then a friar, believing that the cord would mend him, and the belief would have been fulfilled if not for the great priest, whom he curses, who sent him back to the first sins. In life, he says, his works were not those of a lion, but of a fox:
Mentre ch’io forma fui d’ossa e di polpe / che la madre mi diè, l’opere mie / non furon leonine, ma di volpe, while I was the form of bones and flesh that my mother gave me, my works were not those of a lion, but of a fox.
When he reached the age at which every man ought to furl his sails, what had once pleased him began to weigh, and he repented, confessed, and put on the habit. It was then that the pope, whom the common reading identifies with Boniface VIII, at war near the Lateran against Christians, sent for him, as Constantine sent for Sylvester to cure his leprosy, and asked his counsel on how to take Palestrina. Guido kept silent, because the pope's words seemed to him the words of a drunkard, and the pope answered with forgiveness before the sin:
Tuo cuor non sospetti; / finor t’assolvo, e tu m’insegna fare / sì come Penestrino in terra getti. / Lo ciel poss’ io serrare e diserrare, let your heart not suspect; from now on I absolve you, and you teach me how to bring Palestrina down to the ground. I can close and open heaven.
Pressed, Guido gave the counsel: a long promise with a short fulfillment will make the pope triumph on his high throne. When he died, Saint Francis came to fetch him, but one of the black cherubim stopped him: he had to go down, because he had given the fraudulent counsel. The devil seized him and mocked him, and it is the mockery that takes away his excuse:
ch’assolver non si può chi non si pente, / né pentere e volere insieme puossi / per la contradizion che nol consente, for one who does not repent cannot be absolved, nor can one repent and will at the same time, because of the contradiction that does not allow it.
He was taken to Minos, who wraps his tail eight times around his hard back, bites it in rage, and sentences him to the fire. Guido ends by saying that for this he is where he is, clothed in flame, and he laments. The flame moves away, twisting its tip.
Themes Embodied
Guido is Loyalty and Betrayal seen from within intelligence: the sin that puts him there is not violence, it is the use of cleverness to deceive one who trusts those who use it. The counsel he gives the pope is the fraud that puts him in the ditch, and the absolution that the pope promises before the sin does not exist, because there is no repentance. Sin has for him the design of the fox, the cunning that knows every trick and hidden path, and the Justice and Law of the canto is the strict logic of the devil, who reminds him that contradiction does not allow one to repent and will at the same time. Politics is in the background: Romagna divided into tyrannies and the pope's war against Christians.
Guido's pride survives the punishment. He describes himself by his cleverness, speaks frankly like one who will not be repeated, and accepts the absolution the pope promises only because he already knew how that would end, or because he feared a pope in arms. The text sustains two readings: the complicity of one who has already seen where it would lead, or fear.
Divergent Readings
The poem gives Guido two positions and leaves them standing. In one, he is the victim of another's cleverness, the converted man whom the pope led back to his first sins with a promise. In the other, he is the fox caught by its own fox, who pretended to repent while wanting what the pope asked, and who hears the contradiction only when a devil presents it to him. The detail that he confesses out of calculation, and not out of repentance, supports the second; that of the friar who converts and then gives in to the pope supports the first.
Guido and Ulysses are fraudulent counselors who speak from within the fire, and neither speaks without a reason: Ulysses tells the voyage to whoever asks where he died, and Guido tells his life to one whom he reckons will not repeat it.
Relationships
- Dante: the living Italian who answers, city by city, about Romagna, at Virgil's request (Canto XXVII of the Inferno).
- Virgil: the one he heard speaking Lombard, and who passes him on to Dante, since Dante belongs to the present and is Italian.
- Ulysses: the other counselor of the eighth ditch, whose flame moves away before Guido's draws near.