Dante profeta e i vaticini papali

In the XIX Canto of Dante's Inferno, Pope Nicolò III declares that, thanks to a "scritto", he is able to know in advance the succession and the time of the future popes. The poem does not necessarily hint at a "book of the future" but at the literary genre of papal prophecies. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, texts like Vaticinia de summis pontificibus, Liber de Flore, Horoscopus, etc. were quite popular in some ecclesiastic circles, especially among dissidents who shared more radical and apocalyptic views about the life of the church. Exactly during those years, radical figures, like Dolcino, Arnald of Villanova and Gentile from Foligno used to quote, with polemical tones, some of these political texts, relating them to future popes. Dante's allusion must be understood in this historical and literary background. This "scritto" cannot be identified and is probably an invention of the Tuscan poet. The reference is a manifestation of his interest in a genre that was fashionable at the time and may be read as a soft prophetical self-consciousness present in the canto in very ciphered manner