XIX/3 This is a further variation on the punishment accorded to the simoniac Popes who we learn are packed below each other in holes. They are here represented by distorted Papal Crosses bearing down one upon another implying that at the bottom of the mock fonts there is a mere pulp of papacy. Their position also mocks the upside-down Crucifixion of their great and traduced predecessor St. Peter whom they deny as he denied Christ (three times as the crosses indicate). The fissure in the rock, also cruciform, as well as echoing the break in the font of the previous image, indicates the cracking of the walls of the Underworld at the moment of Christ's Harrowing of Hell; this is the ruin made by Love which Virgil explains in Canto X. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.