TANNHAUSER A ROMA -- INVENTARIO DEI LIBRI STAMPATI PALATINO-VATICANI -- Roma -- Vol. II, parte 2, 1891 --.

Speranza

The melodramma by Wagner is obviously anti-Papist, as much as of Verdi's melodrammi were!

In most versions of the ballads, it ends:

And so Tannhauser was damned for eternity
as was Urban IV!

The idea is that it's against the church cannon NOT TO FORGIVE, and the idea that it's God who makes the dry stick flourish makes it clear that it's God we should revere, not the Pope.

Ironically, there is a Tannhauser MS copy in Roma, Vaticano, in vol. numbered 

Pal. V, 432, date on binding 1568: 

"Das Lied von dem Edlen Danheuser," 

26 stanzas. The title in 

E. Stevenson's "Inventario dei libri stampati Palatino-Vaticani," Rome, vol. II, part 2, 1891, p. 98, no. 2365