“The Pope had reserved for this great festival the Beatification of Peter, a Sienese comb-maker, whom the Church had neglected to canonize till now. Poor Peter was honored with all the solemnity of music, high-mass, an officiating cardinal, a florid panegyric, pictured angels bearing his tools to heaven, and combing their own hair as they soared; but he received five hundred years ago a greater honor than all, a verse of praise from Dante.”

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Dante’s besetting sin was not envy, but pride. ↩

On the other side of the world. ↩

The vanity of the Sienese is also spoken of Inferno XXIX 123. ↩