Just When You Think You Have Comedy Figured Out, It Breaks You: Inferno, Canto XIX, Lines 64 - 87

In this passage, we get a clearer picture of the guy stuck upside-down in this hole in the third evil pouch, the third of the malebolge, in the eighth circle of Inferno, stuffed with the fraudsters. It's Pope Nicholas III.

But I also want to explore my unspoken assumptions about the poem that COMEDY breaks in this passage.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we talk through a particularly fraught bit of INFERNO, one that seems to argue for a different dating of Dante's writing of COMEDY and helps us better understand the poem's construction, all while damning popes to hell. In other words, there's a lot to unpack!

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

[01:22] My English translation of the passage: Inferno, Canto XIX, lines 64 - 87. If you'd like to see this passage, you can find it under the "Walking With Dante" header on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:09] The revelation of Pope Nicholas III in the hole--and a curious little problem without a good answer: How does Nicholas know our pilgrim (and his guide) have come down the slope to learn his name?

[06:17] Who was Pope Nicholas III? And why is Dante is harshest critic?

[10:16] The sin of this pouch is finally named: simony.

[12:50] The problem of the math in the passage. How many years does a pope's feet get cooked?

[14:25] A third pope is on the way: Clement V, the guy who took the papacy to Avignon.

[16:46] Unpacking a difficult passage based on the story in II Maccabees 4: 7 - 26.

[18:46] How my unspoken and even unconsidered assumptions about COMEDY got broken.