Danube

Description

In the verse of Paradiso VIII 65 the Danube is recalled to indicate the land that it waters, designating through a geographical periphrasis the kingdom that belonged to Charles Martel on his mother's side, alongside Provence of the Rhône and the kingdom of Naples. The periphrasis belongs to the series with which, from on high, Charles contemplates the three lands that his good governance would have had to protect and which his premature death condemned to a sad fate. In the notes to Inferno XXXII 26 it is also recalled that the form Danoia, used by Dante at the end of the verse, is a word of ancient Italian for the Danube, associated onomatopoetically with the sound of the ice that chills it in winter, so strong as to let pass armies with horses and carts.