Let My Home Be My Gallows

Agnus dei, agnus dei, agnus dei, agnus dei
Agnus dei, agnus dei, agnus dei, agnus dei

[Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter]
Because of his avarice, and his betrayal of the emperor's trust, Pier della Vigna was disgraced, blinded, and imprisoned. Dante's pilgrim finds Pier della Vigna on the seventh level of the Inferno. Like Judas Iscariot, he died by hanging. But Judas and Pier della Vigna are linked in Dante by the avarice he saw in them. In fact avarice and hanging are linked in the medieval mind

Now this is the earliest known depiction of the Crucifixion, carved on an ivory box in Gaul, about A.D. 400. It includes the death by hanging of Judas, his face upturned to the branch that suspends him. Here he is again on the doors of the Benevento cathedral, hanging. This time with his bowels falling out

Now on this plate from the fifteenth-century edition of the Inferno Pier della Vigna's body hangs from a bleeding tree. I will not belabour the obvious parallel with Judas Iscariot, but Dante Alighieri needed no drawn illustration: It is his genius to make Pier della Vigna, now in Hell, speak in strained hisses and coughing sibilants as though he is hanging still

Come l'altre verrem per nostre spoglie
Ma non però ch'alcuna sen rivesta
Ché non è giusto aver ciò ch'om si toglie

Qui le trascineremo, e per la mesta
Selva saranno i nostri corpi appesi
Ciascuno al prun de l'ombra sua molesta

Avarice, hanging, self destruction
Io fei gibbetto a me le mie case
Make my own home be my gallows