"In sul paese chadice e po riga
solea valore e cortesia trovar si
prima che federigo Bavessi briga,
or puo sicuramente indi passarsi
per qualuuche lasciassi per vergogna
di ragionar co buoni, e appressarsi."
PURO., Cant. 16.


3. The "Paese che Adice e Po riga" is of course Lombardy; and might
have been enough distinguished by the name of its principal river. But
Dante has an especial reason for naming the Adige. It is always by the
valley of the Adige that the power of the German Caesars descends on
Italy; and that battlemented bridge, which doubtless many of you
remember, thrown over the Adige at Verona, was so built that the German
riders might have secure and constant access to the city. In which city
they had their first stronghold in Italy, aided therein by the great
family of the Montecchi, Montacutes, Mont-aigu-s, or Montagues; lords,
so called, of the mountain peaks; in feud with the family of the
Cappelletti,--hatted, or, more properly, scarlet-hatted, persons. And
this accident of nomenclature, assisted by your present familiar
knowledge of the real contests of the sharp mountains with the flat
caps, or petasoi, of cloud, (locally giving Mont Pilate its title,
"Pileatus,") may in many points curiously illustrate for you that
contest of Frederick the Second with Innocent the Fourth, which in the
good of it and the evil alike, represents to all time the war of the
solid, rational, and earthly authority of the King, and State, with the
more or less spectral, hooded, imaginative, and nubiform authority of
the Pope, and Church.