Bocca, though a Ghibelline, fought on the Guelph side at Montaperti in
1260 when the Florentine Guelphs went down to defeat. The battle turned on an incident where Bocca cut off the hand of
the Florentine standard bearer at the critical moment.
Inferno Canto XXXII:70-123. He is in the Ninth Circle.
A noble Florentine, and a thief.
Inferno Canto XXV:79-151. He mutates into a serpent. (It may be Buoso de’ Donati who is intended. See
Blake’s Watercolour ‘Buoso Donati attacked by the Serpent’, Tate Gallery,
London.
Bartolommeo de’ Folcacchieri, nicknamed Abbagliato, ‘the foolish’.
He was a member of the Brigata Spendereccia, the Spendthrift
Brigade, a club founded by twelve wealthy Sienese, in the second half of the
thirteenth century, who vied with each other in squandering their money on
riotous living.
Inferno Canto XXIX:121-139. He is in the tenth chasm.
The son of Adam and Eve.
His brother is Cain. See the Bible, Genesis
iv. Abel is the type of the righteous brother.
Inferno Canto IV:1-63. Christ takes his spirit from Limbo into Paradise.
The Patriarch, from whom the Children of Israel derived. The father of
Isaac by his wife Sarah. The type of faith, witness his preparedness to
sacrifice his son Isaac. See the Bible,Genesis xi 25.
Inferno Canto IV:1-63. Christ takes his spirit from Limbo into
Paradise.
King David’s Gilonite counsellor
from Giloh, Ahitophel, see Second Samuel xv-xviii, conspired with David’s
son Absalom against the King, and subsequently hanged himself when his counsel
was not followed. Absalom was killed at the battle in the wood of Ephraim, and
David mourned for him, saying ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would
God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!’
Inferno Canto XXVIII:112-142. He is mentioned.
Francesco d’Accorso (1225-1293) a distinguished lawyer and professor, of
Bologna, son of Accorso da Bagnolo, also a famous lawyer. He lectured at
Oxford.
Inferno Canto XV:100-124. He is in Hell for sodomy.
He was stoned and burned for disregarding Joshua’s decree that the treasure from the
capture of Jericho should be consecrated to the Lord. See Joshua vi 19 and vii.
Purgatorio Canto XX:97-151. He is
mentioned.
Son of Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis. Prince of the Myrmidons of
Phthia in Thessaly in north-eastern Greece. The Greek hero of Homer’s Iliad who
avenges the death of Patroclus by killing Hector,
and dies from an arrow wound inflicted by Paris
in his vulnerable heel. Offered the choice of glory or a long life he chose
fame and a brief existence. Ulysses
(Odysseus) meets his soul in Hades (Odyssey XI).
Inferno Canto V:52-72. He is a carnal sinner in Limbo, for his love of Polyxena, that brought about his death, according to later versions of the Trojan myths.
Inferno Canto XII:49-99. He was tutored by Chiron the Centaur.
Inferno Canto XXVI:43-84. Purgatorio Canto IX:34-63. Ulysses discovered Achilles hiding on Scyros,
where his mother Thetis had concealed
him, at the court of Lycomedes, and took him to the Trojan War. Deidamia fell in love with him, and bore
him a son, and died of grief when he left. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses XIII 162.
For his amazement, see Statius Achilles i 247.
Inferno Canto XXXI:1-45. Peleus’s spear was given to him by Chiron the Centaur. It was cut from an ash on Mount Pelion. Hephaestus forged its blade, and Athene polished the shaft. At Troy Achilles wounded Telephus with it. He was a king of Mysia and the son of Hercules and the nymph Auge. Rust from the spear, rubbed on the wound, cured it. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses XII 112 and XIII 171.
Purgatorio Canto XXI:76-136. The
subject of Statius’s unfinished epic
the Achilleid.
Matteo, one of Boniface’s cardinals,
Minister-General of the Franciscan Order from 1287, who relaxed the
observances, and as Papal Legate interfered in the affairs of Florence in
1300-1301, with disastrous consequences.
Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. He is mentioned.
The first man, see Genesis ii. The Fall made Adam the father of evil,
and the sinful human race, as Eve was its
mother.
Inferno Canto III:100-136. The dead souls are ‘the evil seed of Adam’.
Inferno Canto IV:1-63. Christ takes his spirit from Limbo into Paradise.
Purgatorio Canto IX:1-33. He is referred to, as the vessel of human infirmity.
Purgatorio Canto XI:37-72. His flesh, the flesh of mortality, is a burden.
Purgatorio Canto XXXIII:58-102. According to Eusebius, Adam was on earth for 930 years and in Limbo for 4302 years, making more than five thousand years in all.
Paradiso Canto VII:1-54. In Adam the whole human race fell.
Paradiso Canto XXVI:70-142. Adam’s exile was due to disobedience. His Life in Paradise endured only to the seventh hour. His existence on Earth, in exile, and in Limbo was more than five thousand years: see above.
Paradiso Canto XXXII:115-151. He
sits at the left hand of the Virgin.
Induced by Guido, Alessandro, and Aghinolfo the Conti Guidi of Romena, Master Adam of
Brescia counterfeited the Florentine gold florin, stamped with the figure of St John the Baptist. He was burnt to
death for the crime in 1281, on the Consuma, the pass that leads out of the
Casentino towards Florence. The Conti Guidi escaped punishment. Conte Giudo was
dead by 1300, but the other two were still alive. Fonte Branda, the spring, is
not the more famous one near Siena, but a lesser one near the castle of Romena,
near where Adamo died.
Inferno Canto XXX:49-90. He is in the tenth chasm.
Inferno Canto XXX:91-129. He exchanges blows with Sinon.
An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI. Filippo Argenti belonged to one branch of the family. Ubertino Donati, the ancestor of
Dante’s wife Gemma, had married one of the daughters of Bellincion
Berti, a sister of Gualdrada, and
strongly objected to his father-in-law giving the hand of a third daughter to
one of the Adimari. A fourth daughter may have been the wife of Dante’s great-grandfather
Alighiero I.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned. Hostile to Dante.
Ottobuono de’ Fieschi of Genoa, sent to England while a Cardinal as
Papal legate in 1268, was elected Pope as Adrian V on 12th July 1276, and died
on August 18th. The Fieschi were Counts of Lavagna, taking their name from a
little river that flows into the Gulf of Genoa between Sestri Levante and
Chiavari. One niece was Alagia wife of Moroello III Malaspina.
Purgatorio Canto XIX:70-114. He is
among the avaricious.
Inferno Canto I:61-99. The legendary ancestor of the Roman people. The
son of the Goddess Aphrodite and Anchises. See
Iliad XX. A Trojan noble he escaped the sack of Troy and sailed via Carthage
(where he was loved by Dido but abandoned
her) to Italy. His wife was Creüsa,
daughter of Priam by whom he had Ascanius
(Iulus). His son is Silvius (Ascanius, or Iulus) in Inferno II. His visit to
the underworld in Aeneid VI inspired Dante. Aeneas is the symbol of the Roman
Empire achieved from the ruins of Troy, and the virtuous victor of the Wars in
Latium against Turnus etc. As the ancestor of Rome’s founder Romulus, he is Dante’s Imperial founder
also.
Inferno Canto IV:106-129. He is among the heroes and heroines in Limbo.
Inferno Canto XXVI:43-84. The Trojan War indirectly led to the founding of Rome, and the origin of the Roman people.
Inferno Canto XXVI:85-142. He cremated his old nurse Caïeta in Italy (at modern Gaeta, in Campania). See Ovid’s Metamorphoses XIV157, 443 and XV 716, and Virgil’s Aeneid vii 1-4.
Purgatorio Canto XVIII:112-145. He is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. He is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto IX:67-126. Dido’s love for him wrongs Creüsa’s memory.
Paradiso Canto XV:1-36. He saw his father’s shade in the underworld. Aeneid vi 679.
The god of the winds, the son of Hippotas, and father of Alcyone and Athamas, who kept the winds imprisoned in a cave in the Aeolian Islands between Sicily and Italy. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses- various references.
Purgatorio Canto XXVIII:1-51. He is mentioned as loosing the Sirocco, the south east wind, whose notes are heard in the pine-forests of Ravenna, on the Adriatic shore, at Chiassi, the Classis of the Romans, who used it as a naval station and harbour. There was a later fortress there. See Byron’s ‘Don Juan’ iv 105.
The quasi-historical author of the Fables. He may have been a Phrygian
slave, Babrius, living about the 6th century BC, at the time of Croesus. He was supposed to
have been thrown over a cliff at Delphi for his ugliness, offensiveness or
perhaps rectitude. Around his name a set of tales gathered, and were loosely
attributed to him.
Inferno Canto XXII:124-151. Dante quotes the Frog and the Mouse, in which the Mouse, living on land (Alichino?) is tied to the frog who offers to carry him over the stream (Ciampolo?), and who then leaps into the water, drowning the mouse. A hawk (Calcabrina?) then spies the mouse and snatches it up, snatching up the frog as well. Dante no doubt knew a variant that fitted the situation more closely.
The King of Mycenae, son of Atreus, brother of Menelaus, husband of
Clytemnestra, father of Iphigenia,
Electra and Orestes. The
commander-in-chief of the Greek forces at Troy.
He was told by an oracle to sacrifice his daughter, and vowed to do so,
in order to gain favourable winds, when the Greek fleet was waiting at Aulis,
to sail to Troy. He did so and brought down destruction on his house. See
Aeschylus’s Oresteian trilogy, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses XII 30.
Paradiso Canto V:1-84. He is mentioned as an example of the danger of rash vows.
Pope 535-536 AD. He induced Justinian
to depose Anthimus, Bishop of Constantinople, because of Anthimus’s Monophysite
leanings, and the other heads of the sect were likewise excommunicated. The
Monophysite’s accepted only the divine and not the human nature of Christ.
The Greek tragic poet (c448-400BC).
Purgatorio Canto XXII:94-114. He is in Limbo.
See Guido Conte
The daughter of Cecrops who envied her sister Herse because of Mercury’s
love for her. She was punished for treachery, when Pallas Athene
(Minerva) sent the hag Envy to torment her, and changed to stone by Mercury.
See Ovid’s Metamorphoses II 740, 752, 820.
Purgatorio Canto XIV:124-151. She
is the second of the voices, signifying envy.
Inferno Canto XIII:130-151.
Possibly the speaker is Agli, a judge who hanged himself after giving a false
sentence for money, or Rocco de’ Mozzi.
He entered the Franciscan Order in 1210, and died on the same day as Francis after a vision of Francis
ascending into Paradise.
Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. He is in the Fourth Sphere of the Sun.
A lawyer who deserted the Whites from the Blacks in 1302. Baldo was a
prior in 1298 and 1311, in which year he drew up the decree recalling the
exiles, but expressly excluding Dante. In 1299 he had been convicted of
tampering with the public records of the Courts. See Note to the Purgatorio.
Paradiso Canto XVI:46-87. He is
mentioned.
Ahasuerus, the Persian King, enriched Haman,
until he was accused by Esther of
intending to take the life of Mordecai.
Haman was executed in Mordecai’s place. See Esther iii-viii.
Purgatorio Canto XVII:1-39. He is
mentioned.
King David’s Gilonite counsellor
from Giloh, see Second Samuel
xv-xviii, who conspired with David’s son Absalom, and
subsequently hanged himself when his counsel was not followed.
Inferno Canto XXVIII:112-142. He is mentioned as an evil counsellor.
Inferno Canto XXVIII:1-21. In 1268, at Tagliacozzo, Charles of Anjou defeated Conradin, Manfred’s nephew, using reserve troops, on the advice of Erard.
An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned.
Alberigo Manfredi of Faenza, one of the Frati Gaudenti, the
Jovial Friars, avenged a blow from his younger brother Manfred, in 1284, by
inviting him, and his son, to a banquet in 1285, and at a given signal ‘Bring
the fruits’ Manfred and his son were murdered. Le male frutta (the evil
fruit) di Frate Alberigo became a proverb. He was still alive in 1300,
the date of the Vision.
Inferno Canto XXXIII:91-157. He is in the Ninth Circle.
Griffolino of Arezzo obtained money from Albero by pretending he could
teach him how to fly. On discovering the deceit, Albero induced the Bishop of
Siena to have Griffolino burned as an
Alchemist.
Inferno Canto XXIX:73-99. Griffolino is in the tenth chasm.
Albrecht I of Hapsburg, King of the Germans, and Emperor of the Holy
Roman Empire (1298-1308), the son of the Emperor Rudolph (1273-91). To Dante, Albert
represented both the invader of Italian soil, and the preserver of the Empire.
As an absentee landlord, Dante berates him. He was murdered ultimately, as
Dante predicts, by his nephew, John Parricida.
See Ciacco’s prophecy and Inferno Canto VI:64-93 for an indirect reference.
Purgatorio Canto VI:76-151. Dante inveighs against the state of Italy and Albert’s indifference to its plight.
Paradiso Canto XIX:91-148. Albert carried out an aggressive campaign against Bohemia in 1304, confiscating it as an expired fief of the crown. He is held as an example of poor kingship.
Alessandro and Napoleone, the two sons of Count Alberto degli Alberti,
who held Vernia and Cerbaia in the Val de Bisenzio, quarrelled over their
inheritance and killed each other, sometime after 1282.
Inferno Canto XXXII:40-69. They
are in the Caïna in the Ninth Circle.
Purgatorio Canto VI:1-24. Count Orso, the son of Napoleone was murdered by Alberto the son of Alessandro in the continuing vendetta. He is among the late-repentant.
Albertus of Cologne (1193-1280), the ‘Universal Doctor’, one of the two
great lights of the Dominican order. Albertus, with Thomas Aquinas his pupil, ‘christianised’ Aristotle
adapting his philosophy and making him a treasury of pagan learning.
Paradiso Canto X:64-99. He is in the fourth sphere of Prudence.
The son of Amphiaräus and Eriphyle. She was bribed with the
necklace of Harmonia to betray the hiding place of her husband, who was
compelled to go to the Theban War where he was killed. At the father’s request
the son Alcmaeon killed his mother, and was pursued by the Furies, and was
eventually killed himself. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses IX 408.
Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. He is depicted on the roadway.
Paradiso Canto IV:64-114. He is mentioned
as someone who grappled with conflicting duties.
Purgatorio Canto VI:76-151. The Aldobrandeschi, Ghibelline leaders, held
Santafiora in the Sienese Maremma for almost five centuries. They warred with
the commune of Siena until 1300 when a treaty was agreed.
Purgatorio Canto XI:37-72. Omberto,
Count of Santafiora, in the Sienese Maremma, was put to death at Campagnatico
near Grosseto, by the Sienese in 1259, who resented the arrogance of the family
with whom they had long been at war.
A Florentine Guelph who, with Guido
Guerra, tried to dissuade his party from the conflict that led to the
Guelph disaster at Montaperti in 1260. See Farinata.
He fought courageously and took refuge at Lucca with other defeated Guelphs.
Inferno Canto VI:64-93. Dante asks after him.
Inferno Canto XVI:1-45. He is in the
seventh circle for sodomy.
See Conte Guido.
The son of Philip the Second of Macedonia (Philip ruled 359-336 BC) who ruled from 336 to 323 BC. He created an Empire from Greece and Egypt in
the west, to India in the east, proclaiming himself king of Asia, and burning
Darius’s Persian capital of Persepolis in 330BC. He married Roxane. He killed the historian
Callisthenes, a nephew of Aristotle his former tutor,
and Clitus, a friend of his youth, in a fit of rage. He died of fever, aged 33,
in 323BC, while
preparing for campaigns against Carthage and the Western Mediterranean.
Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He is placed in the seventh circle, in the ring of tyrants, unless the reference is to Alexander of Pherae.
Inferno Canto XIV:1-42. Dante’s source
may have been Albertus Magnus’s De Meteoris,
which describes the apocryphal letter, popular in the Middle Ages, in which
Alexander the Great sends an account of such marvels to Aristotle
his tutor. The soldiers warded off the flames with their clothes.
The Thessalian tyrant who was killed by
his own wife in 323BC.
Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He is
placed in the seventh circle in the ring of tyrants, unless the reference is to
Alexander the Great.
He succeeded his father Peter III of Aragon, and died in 1291.
Purgatorio Canto VII:64-136. He is in Purgatory.
Ali (born c597AD)
a cousin and son-in-law of Mohammed,
was his fourth successor, and moved the capital to Kufa after conflict with
Mohammed’s widow A’isha (First Islamic Civil War). He won the ‘camel-battle’ of
Basra. He was murdered in 661AD after
the indecisive battle of Siffin (657) and the arbitration of Adhroh (658).
Inferno Canto XXVIII:22-54. He is in the ninth chasm of the eighth circle as a schismatic within Islam.
Inferno Canto XXI:97-139. A demon guarding the eighth circle, the fifth chasm, of the barrators.
Inferno Canto XXII:97-123. He allows Ciampolo too much freedom.
Inferno Canto XXII:124-151. He and Calcabrina quarrel.
Dante’s great-grandfather. His mother was Cacciaguida’s wife, Alighiera, of the
Aldighieri family of Ferrara.
Paradiso Canto XV:88-148. The derivation of Dante’s name.
Purgatorio Canto XVII:1-39. Queen
Amata, wife of King Latinus, who hanged
herself through anger at the death of the hero Turnus, to whom her daughter Lavinia was originally betrothed, Lavinia
being destined then to marry Aeneas. The fate of Lavinia
was part of the reason for the Wars in Latium. See Aeneid xii 595.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI. Buondelmonte broke his betrothal oath with a daughter
of the family and his murder in retaliation was the root of the factional split
within Florence.
A Greek seer, one of the heroes at the Calydonian Boar Hunt. He was the
son of Oecleus, and father of Alcmaeon. His wife Eriphyle betrayed him for the golden
necklace Aphrodite gave to Harmonia, wife of Cadmus,, and he enjoined on his
son the duty of punishing her. Alcmaeon killed her, and was pursued by the
Furies. In the War of the Seven against Thebes, Amphiaraüs was one of the seven
champions, and fled along the banks of the river Ismenus in his chariot. He was
on the point of being killed when Zeus cleft the earth with a thunderbolt, and
he vanished from sight, chariot and all, and now reigns alive among the dead.
See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VIII 317, IX 407-410.
Inferno Canto XX:31-51. He is in the eighth circle.
The son of Jupiter and Antiope, and husband of Niobe. He built the walls of Thebes aided by
the magical music of his lyre. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VI 176 and XV 427. He
killed himself through grief at the loss of his sons.
Inferno Canto XXXII:1-39. He is
mentioned.
The fisherman who was unawed by Caesar’s
summons and indifferent to the tumult of the times, secure in his poverty. See
Lucan’s Pharsalia v 520-531.
Paradiso Canto XI:43-117. He is mentioned.
He and his wife Sapphira
sold possessions but kept back part of the price when other followers of Christ
sold everything and gave everything into common ownership, to allow
distribution according to need. They were rebuked by Peter for hypocrisy and died. See
Acts iv 32-37 and V 1-11.
Purgatorio Canto XX:97-151. He is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XXVI:1-69. The Ananias of Damascus who gives sight to the blind Saul of Tarsus (Paul), see Acts ix 10-18 is mentioned.
A Ghibelline family of Ravenna, virtually extinct by 1300. They were
prominent in the latter half of the thirteenth century due to their strife with
the Polentani and other Guelphs of Ravenna.
Purgatorio Canto XIV:67-123. They are mentioned.
Pope Anastasius II (469-498), who censured the non-dogmatic doctrines of
Origen, is here confused, by medieval writers before Dante, with the Byzantine
Emperor Anastasius (491-518), noted for his tolerance, who was induced by the
deacon of Thessalonica, Photinus, to
adopt the Acacian (Acacius, Patriarch of Constantinople) formula, which was an
attempt to reconcile the Monophysite doctrine that Christ appeared as a man but
not with human nature and substance, with the Chalcedonian definition of Christ
as known in two natures, one human, and that without confusion, and in one
person.
Inferno Canto XI:1-66. Anastasius is
with the heretics in the Sixth Circle.
The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, born at Clazomenae in Asia Minor
about 500BC, and a
Persian citizen who went to Athens in the year of Salamis 480/79 BC. He taught the young Pericles, and was later
brought to trial by Pericles’s opponents, charged with impiety. He retired to Ionia
where he settled at Lampsacus. He taught a doctrine of divisible particles of
all types that individually combine together in proportions to produce unique
wholes, ‘in everything there is a portion of everything’. His primal force is
Mind ( Nous) present in all living things, and is present ‘there where
everything else is, in the surrounding mass’ and this concept is his main
contribution to philosophy.
Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among
the philosophers in Limbo.
Inferno Canto I:61-99. The father of Aeneas, who
carried him from burning Troy on his shoulders.
Purgatorio Canto XVIII:112-145. He is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XV:1-36. Aeneas saw his shade in the underworld.
Aeneid vi 679.
Paradiso Canto XIX:91-148. He died
and was buried at Drepanum in Sicily, the Isle of Fire because of Mount Aetna.
See the Funeral Games episode in Aeneid V 40 et seq. and Anchises’s death at
III 700.
See Loderingo.
A Paduan, who wasted his own and other people’s fortunes, employing
arson and other extraordinary methods. He appears to have been executed by Ezzelino da Romano in 1239,
presumably after courting death.
Inferno Canto XIII:109-129. He is
in the seventh circle.
He ruled Hungary in 1300, having usurped the crown that belonged to
Carobert the son of Charles Martel.
Paradiso Canto XIX:91-148. He is held as an example of poor kingship.
The father-in-law of Caiaphas,
the high priest among the Pharisees, see John xi 47-53, who said: ‘it is
expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole
nation should perish not’. Annas sent Christ bound to Caiaphas. See John xviii
24.
Inferno Canto XXIII:82-126. He is in the eighth circle.
Paradiso Canto XXXII:115-151. The
mother of the Virgin. She sits near her, and opposite Saint Peter in Heaven.
St Anselm (1033-1109) Archbishop of Canterbury, who wrote treatises on the
Trinity and the Incarnation. He is known as the second father of Scholasticism,
Scotus Erigena in the ninth century being the first. Both tried to show the
coincidence of natural reason and revealed truth.
Paradiso Canto VII:55-120. Beatrice’s argument follows Anselm’s Cur Deus homo. Adam’s disobedience injured himself not God, and what was demanded was not a propitiation, but restoration. Man was required to give back what he owed, to match what he had taken that he did not own, but could not since he owes everything and owns nothing. Therefore God who owes nothing and owns everything had to become Man to achieve restoration. See Cur Deus homo passim, and specifically Bk i, chapter 15.
Paradiso Canto VII:121-148. Again Anselm’s argument is used: that since God made Adam and Eve flesh directly, man’s body will be restored at the Last Judgement when redemption is complete for the saved.
Paradiso Canto XII:106-145. He is in the Fourth Sphere of the Sun.
See Ugolino della Gherardesca.
One of the Giant sons of Earth and Tartarus. He is unchained in Hell
because he kept out of the battle against the gods of Olympus. The details of
him Dante takes from Lucan’s Pharsalia iv 593-660. Hercules lifted him in the air, whereby
he lost his strength as he no longer touched the earth, and crushed him. See
Ovid’s Metamorphoses IX 184. As an enemy of Hercules he is an enemy of Rome,
since Hercules is Rome’s protector, see Virgil VIII 108 et al.
Inferno Canto XXXI:97-145. He sets the poets down in the Ninth Circle.
The Trojan, who, according to medieval tradition betrayed Troy to the
Greeks. (See Dictys Cretensis, Dares Phrygius, and the later Roman
de Troie) He escaped to Italy after the fall of Troy and founded Padua, see
Aeneid i 242 et seq.
Inferno Canto XXXII:70-123. The Antenora
is named after him.
Paradiso Canto XXIX:85-126. Saint Anthony (251-356). His symbol was the
pig, and he was therefore the patron of the pigs that infested Florence, and
its neighbourhood, belonging to the monks. They were fed on the fraudulent gain
made from selling remissions (indulgences).
The daughter of Oedipus, by Jocasta,
and sister of Eteocles and Polynices. See Sophocles’s Antigone.
Purgatorio Canto XXII:94-114. She is in Limbo. One of the people celebrated by Statius in his epic poetry.
Inferno Canto XIX:31-87. Antiochus IV, ruler of the Seleucid Empire
(175-164BC),
whose self-conferred title was Theos Epiphanes, the evident God. He
accepted a bribe from Jason to make
him high-priest of Judea.
The Greek tragic poet, praised by Aristotle and Plutarch.
Purgatorio Canto XXII:94-114. He is in Limbo.
The son of Jupiter and Latona (Leto), born on the island of Delos.
The sun-god and god of art and music, prophecy and healing, the archer’s bow,
and the lyre. He was present at the battle with the Giants. He is called
Thymbraeus from his temple at Thymbra in the Troad. Artemis-Diana
was his sister.
Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. He is depicted on the roadway.
Paradiso Canto I:1-36. He equates to the Sun, as the sun-god, and to Christ and the Father as the Divine presence. Dante believed that the Muses occupied one peak of Mount Parnassus, and Apollo the other, which Dante calls Cirra.
Apollo flayed Marsyas for challenging his skill in music, and Dante asks for the inspirational breath with which Apollo played on that occasion. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VI 382.
Apollo loved Daphne, the daughter of the river-god Peneus, who was changed into a laurel-tree by the river-god, as Apollo pursued her. He then adopted her laurel as the sacred tree whose leaves would crown his lyre etc. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses I 452-548.
Paradiso Canto II:1-45. Apollo guides the poet.
Paradiso Canto XIII:1-51. His name as God of Healing, and the religious hymn of praise in his honour.
Paradiso Canto XXIX:1-66. The sun.
A Lydian girl, the daughter of Idmon,
famous for her weaving, who
challenged Pallas Athene to a contest, was
defeated, and was changed by Pallas into a spider. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VI
42 etc.
Inferno Canto XVII:1-30. Geryon’s body is adorned with more decoration than her weaving.
Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. She is depicted on the roadway.
An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned.
The son of Callisto or Helice, an Arcadian nympth, a favourite of Artemis-Diana, raped by Jupiter. Diana expelled her from her company, and she was changed by Juno into a bear, and hunted by her son. Jupiter placed her in the sky as the constellation of the Bear, Ursa Major, and Arcas as the constellation of the little Bear, Ursa Minor, at the pole, towards which the ‘pointers’ Dubhe and Merak, of the Great Bear, or Plough, point as it circles on Polaris the pole-star. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses II 409-528
Paradiso Canto XXXI:28-63. Circles over the northern latitudes.
An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned.
Inferno Canto XXV:79-151. A nymph of Elis, one of Diana’s maidens, who
was loved by the river-god Alpheus. She was pursued by him, and was turned into
a fountain. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses V 572.
A Florentine noble who appears with Ciacco
in Boccaccios’s Decameron IX 8. He was notorious for his fierce temper and
overbearing conduct. He and the Adimari family may also have been hostile to
Dante.
Inferno Canto VIII:31-63. He is
rent by the people in the mud.
The wife of Polynices, sister of Deiphyle, and daughter of King Adrastus of Argos.
Purgatorio Canto XXII:94-114. She is in Limbo. One of the people celebrated by Statius in his epic poetry.
One of the Argogliosi or possibly the Ordelaffi family of Forlì, who was
Podestà of Faenza in 1296. When told that he was always drinking he replied
that he was always thirsty.
Purgatorio Canto XXIV:1-33. He is among the gluttonous.
Purgatorio Canto XXXII:64-99.
Mercury lulled him by telling the tale of Syrinx.
The daughter of Minos, King of
Crete, who helped Theseus kill her
half-brother the Minotaur, and was
then abandoned by him on Naxos. Dionysus rescued her and married her, setting Thetis’s crown on her head, which was
later made a constellation, the Corona Borealis, or Northern Crown, thrown by
Dionysus (Bacchus) into the sky to mark their nuptials. The constellation
consists of an arc of seven stars between Hercules and Bootes. Dante follows
the myth that makes the constellation Ariadne herself, set there after her
death.
Inferno Canto XII:1-27. She helped Theseus escape the labyrinth.
Paradiso Canto XIII:1-51. Her crown.
The Greek philosopher, 384-322 BC, the philosopher par excellence for Dante and
the medieval period. Aristotle was born at Stageira in Chalcidice near
Salonica. His father was a doctor. He became a member of Plato’s Academy at Athens, though he was
later to differ from Plato in his thinking. He was Alexander the Great’s
‘tutor’ and founded the Lyceum at Athens, and his teaching while walking in the
garden, the Peripatos, led to its being called the ‘Peripatetic Philosophy’. On
a wave of anti-Macedonian feeling after Alexander’s death, Aristotle retired to
his mother’s property at Chalcis where he died.
Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He leads the philosophers in Limbo.
Inferno Canto XI:67-93. Virgil refers to his Nichomachean Ethics. See VII i ‘....those qualities of character to be avoided, which may be taken as three in number, and we call them incontinence (=lack of self-control), brutishness or bestiality(= violence) and vice (=fraud).’ (My bracketed expansion). See also VII vi ‘...it is thought more excusable to follow the natural impulses, which all men feel, than those which are peculiar to certain persons....bestiality is a lesser evil than vice.
Inferno Canto XI:94-115. Virgil refers to Aristotle’s Physics II ii ‘.. if Art mimics Nature.’
Purgatorio Canto III:1-45. The pagan philosophers cannot hope to understand the ‘why’ of God’s works, and are condemned to an unsatisfied desire for supreme knowledge. (Aquinas: ‘the one demonstrates by means of the cause and is called propter quid.... the other by means of the effect and is called the demonstration quia.)
Paradiso Canto IV:64-114. Dante follows Aristotle’s theory of the dual will, an absolute will that does not consent to evil coupled with a practical will that chooses the lesser of two evils. The former may remain intent on its goal, while the latter compromises, and that is a failing. See Aristotle’s Ethics III, where the example of Alcmaeon is also mentioned.
Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Dante refers to Aristotelian logic, where the propositions that this is so, and this is not so, cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time. Related propositions are termed contradictories e.g. if ‘some swans are not white’ is true, then ‘all swans are white’ is false, since a black swan would be white, and not white, if both statements were true simultaneously.
Paradiso Canto VIII:85-148. Aristotle taught that human society requires varied conditions and qualifications amongst its members. In the Politics he shows that the individual is not self-sufficient but a part of a whole, and a State is a group of citizens providing all the necessary variety for a complete life. Functions and duties are distributed so that the State can be self-sufficient where the individual is not.
Paradiso Canto XXVI:1-69. He taught
that God is the supreme object, towards whom the Heavens yearn. In the
Metaphysics the Prime Mover is the object of longing or of intellectual
apprehension.
The presbyter of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria (early 4th Century). The
Arian heresy denies that the incarnate Son is one substance with the
transcendent First Cause of creation, though differing in Person. The heresy
created dissension until the end of the fourth century.
Paradiso Canto XIII:91-142. He is
mentioned.
The Provençal poet. He flourished between 1180 and 1200 and Richard
Coeur de Lion was among his patrons. (See Ezra Pound’s poem ‘Near Perigord’ in
his collection Lustra). Arnaut was a master of form, the trobar clus or
hidden style, inventing the sestina form, and it was for this above all that
Dante and others regarded him so highly, rather than his sentiment.
Purgatorio Canto XXVI:112-148.
He is among the lustful. In the Provençal poem Dante invents for him, he refers
to the style that hides, and is here open, and reminds Dante to consider
his own punishment to come, for Lust, as Dante himself goes onward.
His family is uncertain. He is said to have been one of Mosca
de’ Lamberti’s accomplices in the murder of Buondelmonte
de’ Buondelmonti, that initiated the Guelf and Ghibelline factional alignments
in Florence.
Inferno Canto VI:64-93. Dante asks
after him.
An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned.
The daughter of Jupiter and Latona, and twin sister of Apollo, born on the island of Delos (hence Delia). She is a moon-goddess, and goddess of the chase.
Purgatorio Canto XXV:109-139. She
expelled Callisto (Helice) from her
company, after Callisto was raped by Jupiter.
See Ovid’s Metamorphoses II
409-528.
Purgatorio Canto XXIX:61-81. Paradiso Canto X:64-99. She has a rainbow-coloured girdle (the Moon’s halo) in her Moon incarnation.
Paradiso Canto XXII:100-154. The moon-goddess and daughter of Latona.
Paradiso Canto XXIII:1-48. Called Diana Trivia by the Romans, identifying her with Hecate, as an underworld aspect of the Triple-Goddess, worshipped where three ways meet. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses II 416.
Paradiso Canto XXIX:1-66. The moon.
The mythical King of Britain, after the Roman withdrawal, around whose
name medieval legends gathered. See Malory’s ‘Le Morte D’Arthur’.
Mordred his nephew and son,
attempted to usurp his kingdom. In the last battle Arthur pierced Mordred with
his lance, at the same time receiving his own death-wound. According to an Old
French version of the theme, which differs from Malory’s version ‘after the
lance was withdrawn a ray of sunlight passed through the wound...’
Inferno Canto XXXII:40-69. He is mentioned in the Ninth Circle.
The Etruscan seer who in Lucan’s
Pharsalia i 584-638 prophesied the Civil War in Rome that ended in Julius Caesar defeating Pompey the Great.
Inferno Canto XX:31-51. He is in the eighth circle.
See Caccia.
A shoemaker of Parma. Asdente, ‘the toothless’, whose real name was
Benvenuto, practised as a soothsayer. He died c1284.
Inferno Canto XX:100-130 He is in the eighth circle.
Inferno Canto XXX:1-48. Juno was angered because of Jupiter’s adultery with Semele, whom she punished, and took vengeance on the house of Cadmus of Thebes, her father. She pursued Ino, Semele’s sister by driving her husband Athamas mad. He killed their son Learchus, and drove Ino to throw herself over a cliff, with their son Melicertes. Ino and Melicertes became sea-gods, namely Leucothea, the White Goddess, and Palaemon. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses III 261 and IV 519.
Pallas Athene (the Roman Minerva), the daughter of Jupiter, sprung from his head, and the goddess of wisdom, intelligence, technical skill, and women’s arts. The olive was her gift to mankind. Often depicted as a warrior goddess. Present at the battle with the Giants.
Purgatorio Canto XII:1-63. She is depicted on the roadway.
Purgatorio Canto XXX:49-81. The olive is sacred to her. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses VI 335, VIII 275 and 664.
Paradiso Canto II:1-45. Minerva breathes intellectual inspiration into the poet.
The third of the three Fates, or Moerae, in Greek myth. They were
begotten by Erebus on Night. Their names are Clotho,’ the spinner’, Lachesis,
‘the measurer’, and Atropos, ‘she who cannot be avoided or turned’. Clotho
spins the thread of a life, Lachesis measures it out, and Atropos cuts the
thread. Moera means a phase, and they are yet another incarnation of the triple
Moon-goddess.
Inferno Canto XXXIII:91-157. She is mentioned.
Purgatorio Canto XXI:1-33. The
other two are mentioned.
Attila the Hun, the scourge of God (flagellum dei), king of the
Huns (433-453) who advanced into the Eastern Roman Empire, and on to the west,
but was turned back at Chalôns in the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields in 451.
He retreated to Hungary (the plains of Tisza) and died there.
Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He is in the seventh circle.
Inferno Canto XIII:130-151. The
historians, and Dante, confused him with Totila, the leader of the Goths, who
reputedly sacked Florence. Totila gained Italy (542-552) excluding Ravenna, and
resisted Belisarius from 544 to 549, but died
fighting Narses at Tadinae.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Christian Saint and influential
theologian. The Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, and one of the four Latin
(western) fathers of the Church with Jerome,
Gregory, and Ambrose. He was born at
Tagaste in Numidia, and was given religious instruction by Monica, his mother.
He wrote the famous Confessions, and The City of God.
Paradiso Canto X:100-129. He is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XXIV:115-154. Dante echoes Augustine, that the conversion of the world without miracles, would have been a greater miracle than any recorded, attesting to their reality.
Paradiso Canto XXXII:1-36. He is
seated below John the Baptist in
Heaven.
Inferno Canto I:61-99. Generally known as Octavian (Octavius) until 27BC when he became the Roman Emperor Augustus. The
adopted son of Julius Caesar. The
founder of the Imperial system and first Roman Emperor who was Caesar from 31BC to AD14. Virgil lived in his reign.
Purgatorio Canto VII:1-39. He ordered Virgil’s remains to be brought from Brindisi to Naples, after Virgil’s death in 19BC, and interred there.
Purgatorio Canto XXIX:106-132. His Triumph is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. Mentioned in
the summary of Imperial history.
Purgatorio Canto II:1-45. The goddess of the dawn, daughter of the Titan Pallas, and wife of Tithonus, for whom she won eternal life but not eternal youth..
Ibn Rushd, 1128-1198 AD.
An Arabian physician and commentator on Aristotle. He
espoused a sceptical philosophy, and as ‘the Commentator’ in
Latin translation c. 1250 made Aristotle’s philosophy supreme in the Middle
Ages.
Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among the group of wise men in Limbo.
Purgatorio Canto XXV:1-79. He
taught, in error, that the human intellect being potential not actualised,
discursive rather than intuitive like the angels, could not have its seat in
the actual organs in the way that animals have intelligence, and so existed
independently of physical form. He does however make self-consciousness a
characteristic of the rational or intellectual soul, as life is of the
vegetable soul, and sensation of the animal soul. ‘The action of the intellect
is likened to a circle, because it turns round upon itself, and comprehends
itself.’
An Arabian physician and commentator on Aristotle
979-1037 AD. He
codified Galen with smatterings of Hippocrates, and was translated into
Latin, for European use, by Gerard of Cremona c. 1180.
Inferno Canto IV:130-151. He is among
the group of wise men in Limbo.
Ezzellino III da Romano, the tyrant (1194-1259), lord of Verona, Vicenza
and Padua, called ‘the son of the devil’, imperial vicar under Frederick II. Pope Alexander IV
declared a crusade against him, and he was defeated at Cassano on the Adda, and
subsequently died. He was the head of the Ghibellines in Northern Italy.
Inferno Canto XII:100-139. He is in the seventh circle, first ring.
Paradiso Canto IX:1-66. His mother
dreamed she had given birth to a firebrand that scorched the land. Cunizza was his sister.
The god of the vine, the son of Jupiter and Semele, was worshipped ecstatically at Thebes in Boeotia (See Ovid’s Metamorphoses III 528). The banks of the neighbouring rivers, Ismenus and Asopus, were crowded with worshippers, when the midnight rituals were enacted, that were designed to ensure the fruitfulness of the crop. The worship of Bacchus (Dionysus) was introduced into Greece from Asia Minor.
Purgatorio Canto XVIII:76-111. The rites are mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XIII:1-51. He is mentioned in the context of the shouts of praise cried out at his rites.
Inferno Canto XXI:97-139. A demon guarding the eighth circle, the fifth chasm, of the barrators.
Inferno Canto XXII:1-30. The sinners hide from him.
Inferno Canto XXII:31-75. He protects Ciampolo from the other demons so that Virgil can speak to him.
Inferno Canto XXII:124-151. He is left rescuing Calcabrina and Alichino from the boiling pitch.
An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned.
The daughter of Raymond
Berenger, and wife of Charles I of
Anjou.
Purgatorio Canto VII:64-136. She is mentioned.
Beatrice d’Este, daughter of Obizzo
d’Este II of Ferrara, married Nino de’ Visconti by whom she had a daughter Giovanna, voted a pension by the
Guelphs in 1328. After Nino’s death Beatrice married Galeazzo Visconti of Milan, a
separate branch. The Milanese Visconti suffered misfortune in 1302. Giovanna
married Riccardo da Cammino of
Treviso. The arrangements for Beatrice’s marriage were in progress at Easter
1300, and the wedding took place in the June.
Purgatorio Canto VIII:46-84. She
is mentioned.
The youngest daughter of Charles the Lame, Charles I of Anjou. She married Azzo VIII d’Este in 1305.
Purgatorio Canto XX:43-96. She is mentioned.
A personification, but also the real Beatrice, whom Dante first saw as a
child of eight, in May 1274, when he was nine years old. His love for her
inspired the Vita Nuova and the Divine Comedy. She was Bice, or Beatrice,
Portinari daughter of Folco de’ Portinari who died in 1288. She died young in
June of 1290. (See Rossetti’s painting Beata Beatrix – Birmingham Museum and
Art Gallery, England)
Inferno Canto I:61-99. Virgil says she will be Dante’s guide in Paradise.
Inferno Canto II:43-93. She asks Virgil to aid Dante.
Inferno Canto X:94-136. She will, through Cacciaguida, reveal Dante’s future to him.
Purgatorio Canto VI 25-48. Virgil tells Dante he will see her again, when they reach the summit of the Mount of Purgatory.
Purgatorio Canto XVIII:1-48. Her Divine philosophy goes beyond Virgil’s human philosophy, entering into matters of Faith.
Purgatorio Canto XVIII:49-75. As Divine Philosophy she takes Freewill to be the noble virtue.
Purgatorio Canto XXVII:1-45. Dante must pass through the purifying fire to reach her.
Purgatorio Canto XXX:1-48. She appears to Dante, wreathed in the olive sacred to Pallas Athene-Minerva, dressed in the white, green and red of Faith, Hope and Charity. Line 48 is a translation of Virgil’s Aeneid iv 23 ‘Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae: I recognise the tokens of the ancient flame.’
Purgatorio Canto XXXI:91-145. For Beatrice’s attributes, note Vita Nuova xxi the sonnet: ‘My lady bears Love in her eyes,’ and Convito III vv 55-58 of the canzone: ‘Her aspect shows the joy of Paradise, seen in her eyes and in her smiling face: Love brought them there as to his dwelling-place.’ Beatrice’s first beauty, her eyes, is that of the cardinal virtues, her seconda bellaza, her second beauty, her smile, is the beauty of the theological virtues.
Purgatorio Canto XXXIII:1-57. Beatrice employs Christ’s words to his disciples. See John xvi 16.
Paradiso Canto XXXI:64-93. Dante sees Beatrice crowned in Heaven, and his final prayer to her.
Paradiso Canto XXXII:1-36. She, Divine Philosophy, sits with Rachel (Contemplation) in Heaven, in the third rank, below the Virgin.
Paradiso Canto XXXIII:1-48. She prays,
with Bernard, to the Virgin, that Dante finds the strength
to persevere in his affections.
Tesauro de’ Beccheria of Pavia, Abbot of Vallombrosa, and Legate of Pope
Alexander IV in Florence, plotted against the Guelphs, after the Ghibellines
had been expelled in 1258 and was executed.
Inferno Canto XXXII:70-123. He is in the Ninth Circle.
Bede (c673-735) the English Ecclesiastical historian who died in Jarrow.
Paradiso Canto X:130-148. He is in the fourth sphere of Prudence.
A Florentine maker of musical instruments, a friend of Dante’s, noted
for his laziness.
Purgatorio Canto IV:88-139. He is
among the late-repentant.
Belisarius (c505-565) restored the authority of the Empire in Italy by
his campaigns against the Ostrogoths. He fell into disfavour, and, according to
legend, beggary. See Robert Graves’ historical novel ‘Count Belisarius.’
Paradiso Canto VI:1-111. He is
mentioned.
An ancient Florentine family. See the note to Paradiso Canto XVI.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned.
The father of ‘ the good Gualdrada’
one of the honoured knights of ancient Florence.
Paradiso Canto XV:88-148. He is mentioned.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. The Conti Guidi were descended from him through Gualdrada.
Paradiso Canto XVI:88-154. Mentioned as marrying one of his daughters to one of the Adimari.
A first cousin of Dante’s father, who was killed for sowing discord
among the Sacchetti family, and was not revenged until thirty years after the
vision, when Geri’s nephews, the sons of Messer Cione del Bello Alighieri
killed one of the Sacchetti in his own house. The families were reconciled in
1342.
Inferno Canto XXIX:1-36. He is in the ninth chasm.
Paradiso Canto IX:67-126. King Belus of Sidon, the Phoenician, father of Dido.
The Christian Saint (c480-543) the founder of the oldest Western
monastic order, the Benedictines. He was born at Nursia in Umbria, and went to
Rome to study. He lived as a hermit for several years near Subiaco. He founded
the famous monastery at Monte Cassino on a mountain between Rome and Naples, a
spur of Monte Cairo, a few miles from Aquino in the north of Campania. It was
once crowned by altars to Apollo and Venus-Aphrodite. The Rule of his Order
demanded poverty, chastity and obedience, manual labour, and irrevocable vows.
He was remembered for his many acts of healing.
Paradiso Canto XXII:1-99. He is manifest in the seventh sphere.
Paradiso Canto XXXII:1-36. He is
seated below John the Baptist in
Heaven.
Benicasa da Laterina, judge to the Podestà of Siena. He condemned a
relative of Ghin di Tacco, a highwayman,
to death, and Ghino took his revenge by murdering him while he was sitting as a
magistrate in Rome.
Purgatorio Canto VI:1-24. He is among the late-repentant.
His daughter Margaret
married Louis IX of France, Eleanor married Henry III of England, Sancha married Richard of Cornwall, and Beatrice married Charles of Anjou, bringing Provence as
her dowry, after her father’s death.
Paradiso Canto VI:112-142. Danter
refers to the fable of his chamberlain, Romeo
of Villeneuve.