Commentary Par XII 82-85

Dominic's honest religiosity is contrasted with the eye-on-the-prize sort of sham activities of two intellectuals, both of whom died within Dante's lifetime.  The first, Enrico di Susa, from Ostia (died in 1271), was a famous canon lawyer (and thus Dante fires another salvo at the venal practitioners of this profession), while Taddeo d'Alderotto (the probable reference is to him) was a Florentine (died in 1295) who studied and then taught medicine at Bologna.  Dante mocks his translation of Aristotle's Ethics in Convivio (Conv.I.x.10).  In these two men Dante pillories two kinds of false intellectual activity, religious law and Aristotelian science, both of which were of great importance to him.