The ordinary reading is _ragione_ (reason), but it seems to us
an obvious blunder for _magione_ (mansion, dwelling).
[172] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 28.
[173] He refers to a change in his own opinions (Lib II. sec. 1), where
he says, "When I knew the nations to have murmured against the
preeminence of the Roman people, and saw the people imagining vain
things _as I myself was wont_." He was a Guelph by inheritance, he
became a Ghibelline by conviction.
[174] It should seem from Dante's words ("at the time when much
people went to see the blessed image," and "ye seem to come from a
far off people") that this was some extraordinary occasion, and what
so likely as the jubilee of 1300? (Compare Paradiso, XXXI. 103-108.)
Dante's comparisons are so constantly drawn from actual eye-sight,
that his allusion (Inferno, XIII. 28-33) to a device of Boniface
VIII. for passing the crowds quietly across the bridge of Saint
Angelo, renders it not unlikely that he was in Rome at that time, and
perhaps conceived his poem there as Giovanni Villani his chronicle.
That Rome would deeply stir his mind and heart is beyond question
"And certes I am of a firm opinion that the stones that stand in her
walls are worthy of reverence, and the soil where she sits worthy
beyond what is preached and admitted of men.
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