in anything, whether trade, or science, or handicraft. Buti and many of the old Commentators interpret it here as "medico," (a doctor), and in. the Decameron Boccaccio wes it continually in that sense.
To remove Guide's scruples, the Pope promised him absolution beforehand for any sin he might commit.
And then he said to me: "Let not thy heart misgive thee: from this moment I absolve thee, and do thou teach me so to contrive that I may hurl down Palestrina to the ground, I have the power, as thou knowest, both to close and to open Heaven; for which purpose two are the keys (committed to me) which my predecessor held not dear."
Guido goes on to relate how he yielded to the Pope's persuasions, which moreover, he hints, were of so cogent and authoritative a nature, that it would probably have cost him his life or his liberty to have resisted them.
Then did his weighty arguments impel me to that point where to be silent seemed to me to be the worst counsel, and I said; " Father, since thou dost cleanse me from that sin into which I now must fall (this is my advice). Long promise with short (i.e., only partial) keeping will make thee triumph on the High Seat."
There is a terrible irony in these words, when one thinks of the last vindictive humiliations that Boniface himself underwent at the hands of Sciarra di Colonna, and which moved even Dante to pity his fallen foe. We are left to infer that Guido deluded himself into a false security from the absolution given to him beforehand, and that he lived on in this delusion for the remaining year of his life as in a dream, from which he was rudely awakened by the reality of finding that the Fiend had triumphed over St. Francis in the contention for his sonl. If he had not been fully persuaded of the efficacy of the Pope's absolution, he would have obtained it anew after due contrition and penitence.
