[620] _His heaving throat_: In Purgatory Dante is known for a mortal by his casting a shadow. Here he is known to be of flesh and blood by the act of respiration; yet, as appears from line 113, the shades, too, breathe as well as perform other functions of living bodies. At least they seem so to do, but this is all only in appearance. They only seem to be flesh and blood, having no weight, casting no shadow, and drawing breath in a way of their own. Dante, as has been said (_Inf._ vi. 36), is hard put to it to make them subject to corporal pains and yet be only shadows. [621] _Merry Friars_: Knights of the Order of Saint Mary, instituted by Urban IV. in 1261. Whether the name of Frati Godenti which they here bear was one of reproach or was simply descriptive of the easy rule under which they lived, is not known. Married men might, under certain conditions, enter the Order. The members were to hold themselves aloof from public office, and were to devote themselves to the defence of the weak and the promotion of justice and religion. The two monkish cavaliers of the text were in 1266 brought to Florence as Podestas, the Pope himself having urged them to go. There is much uncertainty as to the part they played in Florence, but none as to the fact of their rule having been highly distasteful to the Florentines, or as to the other fact, that in Florence they grew wealthy. The Podesta, or chief magistrate, was always a well-born foreigner. Probably some monkish rule or custom forbade either Catalano or Loderingo to leave the monastery singly. [622] _Gardingo_: A quarter of Florence, in which many palaces were destroyed about the time of the Podestaship of the Frati. [623] _One man as victim_: _St. John_ xi. 50. Caiaphas and Annas, with the Scribes and Pharisees who persecuted Jesus to the death, are the vilest hypocrites of all. They lie naked across the path, unburdened by the leaden cloak, it is true, but only that they may feel the more keenly the weight of the punishment of all the hypocrites of the world. [624] _Virgil_: On Virgil's earlier journey through Inferno Caiaphas and the others were not here, and he wonders as at something out of a world to him unknown. [625] _On the right_: As they are moving round the Bolgia to the left, the rocky barrier between them and the Seventh Bolgia is on their right. [626] _We, both of us_: Dante, still in the body, as well as Virgil, the shade. [627] _The encircling wall_: That which encloses all the Malebolge. [628] _He warned us_: Malacoda (_Inf._ xxi. 109) had assured him that the next rib of rock ran unbroken across all the Bolgias, but it too, like all the other bridges, proves to have been, at the time of the earthquake, shattered where it crossed this gulf of the hypocrites. The earthquake told most on this Bolgia, because the death of Christ and the attendant earthquake were, in a sense, caused by the hypocrisy of Caiaphas and the rest.