• The Florentines. ↩
• The Pisans. ↩
• At the close of these vituperations, perhaps to soften the sarcasm by making it more general, Benvenuto appends this note:⁠— “What Dante says of the inhabitants of the Val d’ Arno might be said of the greater part of the Italians, nay, of the world. Dante, being once asked why he had put more Christians than Gentiles into Hell, replied, ‘Because I have known the Christians better.’ ” ↩
• Messer Fulcieri da Calboli of Forli, nephew of Rinieri. He was Podestà of Florence in 1302, and, being bribed by the Neri, had many of the Bianchi put to death. ↩
• Florence, the habitation of these wolves, left so stripped by Fulcieri, on his retiring from office, that it will be long in recovering its former prosperity. ↩
• Guido del Duca of Brettinoro, near Forli, in Romagna; nothing remains but the name. He and his companion Rinieri were “gentlemen of worth, if they had not been burned up with envy.” ↩
• On worldly goods, where selfishness excludes others; in contrast with the spiritual, which increase by being shared. See Canto XV 45 . ↩