Meeting Your Heroes: The Valley of Rulers — Divine Comedy

Recognition of greatness arrives before anything else. Sordello steps back after their embrace and demands to know who these travelers are. Virgil answers briefly: his bones were buried by Octavius; he is Virgil, deprived of heaven for no sin except lack of faith. Sordello wavers, it is, yet is not, then bows and clasps him like a lord. 'Glory of Latium, in whom our tongue its utmost power display'd!' He asks where Virgil comes from. Virgil describes Limbo: not torments but dun shades; mourning that breathes in sighs, not anguish; little innocents bitten by death before baptism; and those who understood and followed every virtue except the three holy ones. He asks Sordello to show them the way. Sordello explains the rule: no certain place is assigned him, but the sun is declining. Night confuses and perplex the will, they could wander or slide back down. Only this line shalt thou not overpass, soon as the sun has disappeared. He leads them along a crooked path into a hollow carved in the mountain's side. The beauty there surpasses gold, silver three-refined, scarlet grain, ceruse, Indian wood, fresh emeralds, all outdone by the colours of the grass and flowers, and a thousand unnamed fragrances. Souls sitting on the grass are singing the Salve Regina. From the eminence above them, Sordello names the rulers below. Emperor Rudolf, who might have healed the wounds whereof fair Italy hath died, sits apart and moves not his lip in song. Ottocar of Bohemia comforts him; he was worth more in his swaddling clothes than his bearded son Wenceslas. Philip III of France and Henry of Navarre mourn together, father and father-in-law of Gallia's bane, Philip IV. Pedro III and Charles of Anjou sit together in song; their sons let the inheritance decay, and rarely does human worth mount up through the branches of the tree. Harry of England sits alone but spreads better issue through his children. Last, William of Monferrat sits lowest of all, gazing upward, remembered by the grief his death brought to Conferrat and Canavese.