Alighieri begins canto 19 with the apostrophe of “O Simon Magus, O wretched followers, you who the things of God, that should be brides of goodness rapaciously” (Inf. 19. 1-2). The subject of the apostrophe, Simon Magus is a Samaritan magician who offered money to buy priesthood from Saint Peter. And eventually, this becomes a permissible common practice to commercially exchange priesthood and the church (Durling Comm.). Alighieri then draws an analogy comparing Simony to prostitution with the line of “adulterate for gold and for silver” (Inf. 19. 4). We can see that the spiritual role of the priesthood cannot be leveraged through monetary means; and if it does, it will corrupt the intellect and the will of the individual. There is somewhat of a connection between simony and usury since both sins are predicated on the exchange of money. Usury, the practice of money-lending seems to be a self-defeating action; the mean of this action is also the end of this action, and this renders usury as a sin that is meaningless, yet benefits the interest of the self. Whereas simony is a more severed sin that utilizes money to gain spiritual and religious power; this makes it easy for a wealthy individual to buy their way to becoming a priest. Many can abuse simony to influence others to gain self-interest, thus causing corruption in social order. In Alighieri’s imagery, corruption is never viewed as a whole or complete, but is being metaphorically described in the form of pockets: “the livid rock perforated with holes” (Inf. 19. 13).

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