Commentary Purg XX 94-96

Hugh's second apostrophe parallels Dante's ([Purg XX 13-15]) in hoping for divine vengeance to descend from above and smite the guilty, in this case most particularly Philip the Fair.

      There are questions as to whether the poet meant the reader to think of the 'vengeance' as reflecting Philip's defeats in Flanders in 1302 (see DDP Singleton.Purg.XX.96]), or Philip's death while hunting, when his horse was overturned by a charging boar, in 1314 (the opinion of John of Serravalle [DDP Serravalle.Purg.XX.94-96]), or neither of these events.  As Trucchi (DDP Trucchi.Purg.XX.94-96) points out, Dante clearly refers with joy to Philip's death in November 1314 at [Par XIX 118-120].  The notion that God's vengeance for the events at Anagni in 1303 occurred in Flanders in 1302 hardly seems acceptable.  Further, as Bosco/Reggio (DDP Bosco.Purg.XX.94-96) argue, since Dante does refer to Philip's death in the next cantica, it only makes sense to believe that he did not yet know of it when he wrote this passage, for it would have been much too tempting a piece of information not to include.  In any case, the result is as Dante probably would have wanted anyway; here he predicts only that such outrageous behavior will receive God's eventual vengeance -- it is but a matter of time.  This seems the best understanding.  The gleeful passage in Paradiso banks the promissory note that Dante writes us here.

      Scartazzini (DDP Scartazzini.Purg.XX.95) was perhaps the first to cite, as a source for the oblique phrasing of this tercet, which causes some readers difficulty, Psalms 57:11 (58:10): 'Laetabitur iustus cum viderit vindictam' (The just man shall rejoice when he witnesses his revenge).

      At [Purg XX 35], Dante had inquired as to the speaker's identity; it has taken Hugh sixty-two lines to answer him by including the history of France's decline as a narrative of a family's woe, from his virtue to Philip's savagery, in just over three hundred years.  Needless to say, for Dante Hugh's tale is still more important as the record of what went wrong for Italy, drawing her from her Roman-imperial destiny toward her near death (see [Purg VII 94-96]), because of France's malfeasance.