PURGATORIO, Episode 160. The Madness Of Hugh Capet's Descendants: PURGATORIO, Canto XX, Lines 61 - 81

Hugh Capet continues the story of his family, bringing the saga of the French (or Frankish) crown into Dante's day with three of Hugh's most infamous descendants . . . at least as far as the poet is concerned.

Our pilgrim gets treated to a grim recital of French misdeeds. And we catch our first whiff of antisemitism in COMEDY, just at the moment the actual French monarchy is expelling the Jews from French territory.

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Here are the segments for this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:43] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XX, lines 61 - 81. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation about this difficult passage with me and others, please scroll down this page.

[04:07] The poetics in the passage: structure and rhyme.

[07:51] The troubled disconnection and reconnection of Provence and France.

[12:48] Hugh Capet's first malicious descendant: Charles I of Anjou (1226 - 1281).

[19:10] The second miscreant among his issue: Charles of Valois (1270 - 1325).

[22:56] The first instance of antisemitism in COMEDY.

[29:37] Hugh Capet's third bad seed: Charles II of Anjou (1254 - 1309).

[32:50] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XX, lines 61 - 81.

Here’s my English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XX, Lines 61 – 81

“So long as the grand Provençal dowry

Hadn’t extracted the shame from my blood,

It wasn’t valued highly but also hadn’t done much damage.

“Yet there with fraud and plundering

It began its rapacious ways—then, to balance the accounts,

It took Ponthieu, Normandy, and Gascony.

“Charles descended into Italy—and to balance the accounts,

Made a victim out of Conradino.

He then drove Thomas back to heaven, to balance the accounts.

“I see a moment (and not far in the future)

That will drag another Charles out of France

To make himself and his family more well-known.

“He comes alone, without arms . . . well, with only the lance

With which Judas jousted. He’ll stick the point right into

Florence’s belly until it bursts.

“Because of this [thurst], he’ll win sin and shame, not land.

The more lightly he counts up the harm,

The heavier it will prove for him.

“Yet another, who was captured on a ship,

I see him selling his daughter, even bargaining over her,

As pirates do over their enslaved females. . . .”