Pasqua Dante's Black Florin

1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-88-354-8603-9
Verlag: Tektime
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 244 Seiten

The novel also recounts the story of Riccardo, a Florentine infantry man who fought alongside the young poet Dante Alighieri during the castle's terrible siege. The story of young Riccardo in the 13th century intersects with that of Umberto in the present day, and for both, the events unfolding within that castle will change their lives forever. Umberto, like Riccardo centuries earlier, will discover love there.
Two protagonists from different eras, whose stories run parallel, challenge the unknown by discovering new and unexpected passions. An adventurous tale of men, arms, and love that weaves together the Middle Ages and the present day.


Umberto is a Milanese doctor nearing retirement. Out of sheer curiosity, he investigates the origin of his surname and discovers a distant noble Tuscan lineage. One of his Ghibelline ancestors had taken refuge in a Sienese castle in 1285, and the Bishop of Arezzo, Guglielmo degli Ubertini, incited a rebellion against the city of Siena that ended, months later, in a bloodbath. The protagonist, captivated by the place's beauty, decides to buy a house near the castle, which has been abandoned and inaccessible for years; he leaves Milan to move there and spend his retirement. During the renovation work, he accidentally finds an ancient Florentine coin, a copper florin, also known as a black florin, and Cesira, a clairvoyant, senses that the coin belonged to a particularly important figure, Dante Alighieri, and was lost under turbulent and dramatic circumstances. The novel tells the story of Riccardo, a Florentine foot soldier who fought alongside the young poet Dante Alighieri during the terrible siege of the castle. The story of the young Riccardo in the 13th century intersects with that of Umberto in the present day, and for both, the events that unfold in that castle will change their lives forever. Umberto, like Riccardo centuries before, will discover love in that very place. Two protagonists from different eras, whose stories run parallel, challenge the unknown while discovering new and unexpected passions. An adventurous tale of men, arms, and love that weaves together the Middle Ages and the present day.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pasqua, Marco Del

Weitere Mitwirkende

Maria, Burnett

Leseproben

Foreword

by Patrizia Turrini 

The (few) certainties regarding Dante’s youth  

Despite extensive archival research, only two notarial documents have been found regarding Dante Alighieri’s early years: in the first, between March 1283 and March 1284, Dante, son of the late Alighiero—about 18 years old, having been born in 1265—assigned a debt of 21 lire owed to his deceased father (this confirms Alighiero’s death occurred when the future Poet was still a teenager); in the second, dated September 1291, Dante served as a witness in a legal case (New Annotated Edition of Dante’s Works, edited by E. Malato, vol. VII, t. III, Diplomatic Code of Dante,  edited by T. De Robertis, G. Milani, L. Regnicoli, and S. Zampoli, Rome, Salerno, Antenore, 2016, doc. no. 65, pp. 96–97, and doc. no. 74, p. 107 and p. 753).

To these two accounts is added what Leonardo Bruni wrote in the Vita di Dante (of 1436), namely that the “young and well-regarded” man had been at Campaldino, “fighting vigorously on horseback in the first ranks, where he faced grave danger, for the first battle was fought by the cavalry” (New Annotated Edition of Dante’s Works, vol. VII, t. IV, The Lives of Dante from the 14th to the 16th Century. Dantean Iconography, edited by M. Berté and M. Fiorilla, S. Chioso and I. Valenti, Rome, Salerno, Antenore 2017, pp. 225–226). At Campaldino on June 11, 1289, the Guelph league—primarily Florentine—faced off against the Ghibelline league—primarily Aretine—which was defeated. Bruni also reported (Historiae, IV, 10–11) that in that battle Dante was in the “first rank” as a “feditore” (i.e., a lightly armed cavalryman) of the Porta San Piero district, citing a letter from the Poet himself (now lost), in which all this was recounted and which, as chancellor of the Florentine Republic, he had been able to read. Therefore, this testimony, though belated, is considered reliable given the role of chancellor held by the biographer, Bruni.

Moreover, Dante’s participation at Campaldino is confirmed not only by the lost letter but also by the many details accompanying the account of that battle, which can be found in several passages of the Divine Comedy: for example, in the encounter between Dante and Virgil with the valiant Ghibelline Buonconte di Montefeltro, the violent and epic storm unleashed by the Devil is recalled to cause torment and the loss in the Archiano River of Buonconte’s own corpse, who died in that battle invoking the Virgin Mary in extremis—a circumstance that had saved him from Hell and brought him among the souls in Purgatory (Purgatory, V, lines 85–129). One might infer that Dante witnessed and endured that terrible storm! It is also certain that Dante himself, one of the four hundred knights of the Florentine militia, participated in the clash between the Guelph League and the Ghibellines of Pisa that took place at Caprona, in the Pisan Valdarno, on August 6, 1289, a few days after Campaldino; indeed, in the passage of the Inferno where Dante describes the frightened Ghibellines leaving the castle—defeated and forced to pass through the ranks of the victors—it is clearly written: “Thus I saw the foot soldiers already trembling/ as they emerged in disarray from Caprona,/ seeing themselves surrounded by so many enemies” (Inferno, XXI, vv. 95; see The Lives of Dante from the 14th to the 16th Century, Introduction, p. XXXVIII).

As for the siege of Arezzo in 1288, followed by the Battle of Pieve al Toppo, Dante mentions it in the Divine Comedy, but it was essentially led by the Guelph troops of Siena, with little participation by the Florentines.

Hypotheses regarding Dante’s presence at the siege of Poggio Santa Cecilia. It is, however, merely a hypothesis that Dante, at the age of twenty, was “involved in his first military engagement,” namely the siege of Poggio Santa Cecilia, in which one hundred Florentine stipendiari participated.

Published records show that, following a decision made by the  Savi of Florence on November 15, 1285, the Florentine cavalry departed on the 27th or 28th of that month for Poggio Santa Cecilia. The request had been made by the Sienese allies against whom the inhabitants of Poggio had rebelled, incited and aided by the Bishop of Arezzo, Guglielmino degli Ubertini, leader of the Tuscan Ghibellines. Thus, while part of the Florentine expeditionary force remained to guard the passes of the Florentine Valdarno, the larger part joined the Sienese Guelphs. The entire contingent, under the command of Guido di Montfort, Charles of Anjou’s vicar general in Tuscany, laid siege to the rebellious castle, which would fall in a bloodbath six months later, between April 7 and 8, 1286; immediately, “on April 15, the third day of Easter,” five leaders of the revolt, Ghibelline nobles from the Sienese territory, were beheaded (Poggio Santa Cecilia and the Church of the Madonna in Ferrata, edited by C. Alessi, D. Mazzini, and P. Turrini, Siena, Pascal Editrice, 2009).

The Dante scholar Giorgio Petrocchi, in his biography of the Poet (Vita di Dante, Bari, Laterza, 1983, chap. IV), considered it plausible that Dante had joined the ranks of the besieging Guelphs—Sienese and Florentines—based on a passage from *Vita Nuova* (IX, 1–2), in which the Poet himself recounts having left Florence and having been “in the company of many” following the death of a friend of Beatrice’s in the final months of 1285: “After the death of this woman [Beatrice’s friend], a few days later something happened that compelled me to leave the aforementioned city [Florence] and go to those parts where the gentle lady who had been my defense was, even though the destination of my journey was not as far away as she was. Moreover, though I was in the company of many, the sight of the journey displeased me so much that […] his eyes [Love’s] seemed to me to turn toward a beautiful, flowing, and crystal-clear river, which ran along this path to where I was” (Vita Nuova, IX, 1-2).

Other recent commentators have also supported the hypothesis that Dante was present at the siege of Poggio Santa Cecilia based on additional evidence: in particular Simone De Fraja (The Siege of the Fortification of Poggio Santa Cecilia, in “Notizie di storia,” journal of the Arezzo Historical Society, no. 34, December 2015) and Daniele Iacomoni (Dante at Twenty During the Siege of Poggio Santa Cecilia, typescript). Thus, the famous description of the horrible swamp of the Styx is cited, which Dante crossed together with Virgil upon leaving the fourth circle of Hell: “We crossed the circle and reached the other bank / above a spring that bubbles and pours / into a ditch that flows from it./ The water was dark / far more than murky; / and we, accompanied by the murky waves, / descended along a different path. / Into the marsh called Styx / flows this sad stream, when it descends / to the foot of the malevolent gray shores / And I, intent on gazing, / saw muddy people in that quagmire, / all naked, with a wounded countenance” (Inferno, VII, lines 100–111). Certainly, the Styx is not a creation of Dante’s, but one of the five rivers of Hell according to Greek and Roman mythology (Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI); what is original, however, is the description—comments Daniele Iacomoni—that the Poet gives of it, characterizing the marsh with that water “that bubbles.” It is therefore possible that Dante was inspired by the geothermal phenomena characteristic of the area between Poggio Santa Cecilia and nearby Rapolano: the emission of thermal waters, pools, and mud, with water and soil “bubbling” due to the release of sulfur dioxide, which, when mixed with rain, creates a sort of boiling mud. In Italy, this occurs, aside from the Rapolano area, only in Pozzuoli; however, Dante never ventured beyond Rome—which he reached as a pilgrim in 1300 and as an ambassador in 1301—so it is likely that he witnessed the phenomenon and was struck by it while among the besiegers of Poggio Santa Cecilia.

Furthermore, Dante places the shadow of Guido di Simone di Montfort “on one side alone,” as it emerges mournfully from the blood-red water of the bulicame, in the first circle of the seventh circle among the violent (Inferno, XII, 118). To avenge the death of his father Simone, the English commander had in fact killed Henry of Cornwall, nephew of the King of England, in Viterbo in 1270; the murder had been committed treacherously, “in God’s bosom,” that is, in church during the celebration of Mass at the moment of the elevation. This suggests—as Iacomoni further notes—that Dante was personally acquainted with this violent and cruel figure: indeed, if the hypothesis of the future Poet’s presence at the siege were true, he would have been under the command of Guido di Montfort himself, having thus witnessed the darker aspects of his personality. In any case, the brutal and sacrilegious episode had deeply shocked public opinion and was widely known, partly because it had gone unpunished: thanks to the protection of Charles of Anjou, the excommunicated Guido Montfort had taken refuge in the Maremma with the Aldobrandeschi family, having married in 1270 Margherita, daughter of Count Ildibrandino of Pitigliano; later absolved of excommunication, he returned to the service of Anjou and to the hunt for the Tuscan Ghibellines (P. Camporesi, Montfort, Guido di, in...