The Monk - Matthew Gregory Lewis [197]
13. watching: sustained, late-night religious vigils.
14. peccadilloes: venial sins, minor faults.
15. Diavolo: Italian, devil.
16. the Prado: a promenade in Madrid.
17. parlour-grate: a screen through which cloistered nuns were able to speak with visitors from the outside world. pistoles: Spanish gold coins.
18. St. Jago: St. James, one of the Apostles, who was reputed to have evangelized Spain.
19. Mount Ætna: volcano in Sicily.
20. vespers: evening prayer service.
21. St. Clare: an Italian noblewoman who dedicated herself to following in St. Francis’s footsteps and founded an order of nuns.
22. Mahomet: eighteenth-century spelling of the name of the founder of Islam, Muhammad.
23. hotel: large mansion, or palace.
24. phœnix: a paragon, an exceptional individual. From the name of a mythical bird of which only one was believed to exist at a time.
25. glasses: mirrors. p. 25, philtre: magic potion.
CHAPTER II
1. Epigraph: Torquato Tasso (1544–95), L’Aminta I.i.26–31.
2. equipage: carriage, horses, and attendants.
3. jessamine: jasmine.
4. ennui: lack of interest, deep boredom.
5. poniard: dagger.
6. instances: entreaties.
7. Estramadura: a region southwest of Madrid.
8. cientipedoro: a poisonous centipede.
9. the famous battle of Roncevalles: As recounted in the twelfth-century French epic The Song of Roland, Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees was the site of Roland’s defeat at the hands of the Saracens. Lewis apparently conflated the name of Roland’s sword, Durandal, with that of Durandarte. The story of Durandarte and Belerma appears in Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, vol. II, ch. 23.
10. brand: sword.
11. glaive: lance or spear.
12. Martin Galuppi: not a historical figure.
13. St. Anthony: St. Anthony went to live in the deserts of Egypt and became an ascetic after struggling with and succeeding in warding off a series of temptations by the devil.
CHAPTER III
1. Epigraph: Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona IV.i.5–6 and 44–6. Line 44 is modified, “them” being substituted for “us.” The villains under discussion are highway robbers whom one of the protagonists is in the process of joining.
2. Lindenberg: a town in Germany.
3. Hispaniola: an island in the Caribbean. It now comprises the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
4. Salamanca: a university town in Spain.
5. chaise: a closed carriage for one to three passengers.
6. postillion: a person who rides one of the horses that accompany a carriage on a journey.
7. banditti: Italian, bandits.
8. Bavaria: a region in the south of Germany.
VOLUME II
CHAPTER IV
1. Epigraph: Shakespeare, Macbeth III.iv.93–96 and 106–7. Macbeth addresses the ghost of Banquo.
2. “Perceforest,” “Tirante the White,” “Palmerin of England,” and “the Knight of the Sun”: chivalric prose romances of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries.
3. “the Loves of Tristan and the Queen Iseult———”: another romance, based upon the tragic history of two lovers that forms part of the Arthurian saga.
4. paternoster: Latin, our father. the Lord’s Prayer.
5. De profundis: “Out of the depths,” the first words of the Latin version of Psalm 130; a prayer of penitence or despair.
6. duenna: an older woman who chaperones a younger woman.
7. corse: corpse.
8. the Great Mogul: chief of the Mogul Empire of the Indian subcontinent.
9. Doctor Faustus: legendary medieval figure who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a period of unlimited power and was eventually dragged down to hell. The playwright Christopher Marlowe (1564–93) adapted the legend in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (published in 1604), and it also formed the basis for Goethe’s Faust, begun in 1770 and completed in 1832.
10. the wandering Jew: Many different legends exist about this figure, who was said to have been present when Jesus Christ was on his way to be crucified. In the most common version, the Jewish man tells Jesus to move more quickly, and as punishment is told that he will have to remain in motion until the Second Coming.
11. the Inquisition: the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical