Zimmer: Let My Home Be My Gallows - Anthony Hopkins, Libera, The Lyndhurst Orchestra

Agnus Dei, Agnus Dei, Agnus Dei, Agnus Dei…

Agnus Dei, Agnus Dei, Agnus Dei…

HANNIBAL:

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. four hundred.

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