James Russell Lowell, Among my books

‘ [104] more powerfully illumine the orb of earth over which he is set by him alone who is the ruler of all things spiritual and temporal.’¹ As to the fatal gift of Constantine, Dante demonstrates that an Emperor could not alienate what he held only in trust; but if he made the gift, the Pope should hold it as a feudatory of the Empire, for the benefit, however, of Christ's poor.² Dante is always careful to distinguish between the Papacy and the Pope. He prophesies for Boniface VIII. a place in hell,³ but acknowledges him as the Vicar of Christ, goes so far even as to denounce the outrage of Guillaume de Nogaret at Anagni as done to the Saviour himself.⁴ But in the Spiritual World Dante acknowledges no such supremacy, and, when he would have fallen on his knees before Adrian V., is rebuked by him in a quotation from the Apocalypse:—

Err not, fellow-servant am I
With thee and with the others to one power.

Purgatorio, XIX. 134, 135.

So impartial was this man whose great work is so often represented as a kind of bag in which he secreted the gall of personal prejudice, so truly Catholic is he, that both parties find their arsenal in him. The Romanist proves his soundness in doctrine, the anti-Romanist claims him as the first Protestant; the Mazzinist and