“O German Albert, who abandonest her That has grown savage and indomitable, And oughtest to bestride her saddle-bow, May a just judgment from the stars down fall Upon thy blood, and be it new and open That thy successor may have fear thereof; Because thy father and thyself have suffered, By greed of those transalpine lands distrained, The garden of the empire to be waste.”

The deed which was so soon to move the pen of the Recording Angel was the invasion of Bohemia in 1303. ↩

Philip the Fair of France, who, after his defeat at Courtray in 1302, falsified the coin of the realm, with which he paid his troops. He was killed in 1314 by a fall from his horse, caused by the attack of a wild boar. Dante uses the word cotenna , the skin of the wild boar, for the boar itself. ↩