Ugolino and Dante
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[edit] Introduction to Ugolino
Count Ugolino Gherardesca was a Ghibelline Pisan leader that Dante placed in the 9th circle of hell in Inferno because of his treason against his country. In the poem, Ugolino is found frozen in the ice of Anetora chewing on the head of his betrayer, Ruggiero the Archbishop of Pisa. Dante the Pilgrim asks the two men how it was that they came to be damned, and Ugolino turns his head and goes into a long discourse about how he died at the hands of Ruggiero and came to be in hell. But the historical Ugolino is very different then the Ugolino portrayed in Inferno.
[edit] Political Strife in Pisa
Most of what we now call Italy, during the time of Ugolino and Dante, was controlled by two political parties known as the Guelphs and Ghibelines. The Ghibelines believed in Papal Empire that would have Italy as its center. The Guelphs believed in having a secular self-governed city state. Until 1284, Pisa was a Ghibeline state run by Count Ugolino’s family, however most of the surrounding city-states were Guelphic. Pisa’s main trading rivals and neighbors were Genoa and Florence, and even though both city-states were run by opposing parties, they were both unfriendly to the Ghibeline’s in Pisa. These unfriendly surroundings forced Pisa to have a “strong and vigilant government” and a leader that was “armed with almost despotic power”[[1]]. This leader was known as the Podesta. After the death of Count Della Gherardesca, Ugolino became the head of the Gherardesca family, intern chief of the Ghibelines in Pisa and the new Podesta. Ugolino was determined to use his new post not for the good of his city, but for his own quest for power.[2]
[edit] Ugolino’s Treason
Ugolino’s thirst for power became apparent once he gained the post of chief of the Pisan Ghibelines. Ugolino, sensing that Genoa and other surrounding Guelphic states felt hostility towards the Ghibelines of Pisa, took action to preserve his post. He aligned himself with Jean Visconti of Gallura, the head of the Pisan Guelphs. This flirtation with both parties was the beginning of a series of betrayals that would eventually inspire Dante Alighieri to include Ugolino in his epic poem, The Inferno, in the circle of the betrayers. Late in the 11th century, Ugolino and Jean Visconti devised a plan to gain support from sympathetic Guelphs in Tuscany in order to undermine the Pisan government. The ultimate goal was for Ugolino and Gallura to one-day share power in Pisa.
In 1274, the plan was uncovered, Ugolino imprisoned, and Gallura banished from Pisa. Ugolino eventually freed himself from prison, and with the help of surrounding city states, Florence and Lucca, he forced the Ghibelines of Pisa to surrender, and to pardon Guelphic exiles.
Ugolino then retuned to Pisa but distanced himself from politics and leadership until 1284, when he was appointed commander of a Pisan fleet. Alberto Morosini, the Podesta, or dictator of Pisa, appointed Ugolino and Andreotto Saracini as captains of two divisions of fleets. A battle commenced against the opposing Genoese fleet and as the battle continued, the Genoese fought with great vigor, managing to capture a Pisan admiral, the Podesta. Throughout the battle, twenty-eight galleys were captured, seven were destroyed, five thousand men were killed, and eleven thousand were taken prisoner.1 Offering the sign of surrender, Ugolino ceased his participation in the battle, and once more, aided in the weakening and defeat of his countrymen for his own political gain. Suspicions rose and Ugolino faced allegations of treason for his destructive aid in weakening his homeland.[3]
[edit] Ugolino in the Inferno
In Dante’s Inferno, the deepest circle of hell is reserved for betrayers of kin, country, guests, and benefactors. Count Ugolino of Pisa, who led a politically controversial life, finds himself in the 9th circle of hell surrounded by betrayers of country and party. It can be assumed that Ugolino’s tyrannical behavior and constant betrayal of the people of Pisa in life has earned him this distinction in the afterlife.
In this hell, Ugolino’s punishment involves his being entrapped in ice up to his neck in the same hole with Archbishop Ruggiero, Ugolino’s former ally, who had betrayed him by murdering Ugolino and his heirs. Ugolino, who is rumored to have eaten the corpses of his own children and grandchildren to stay his own starvation, will spend eternity gnawing on the skull of his betrayer. As Dante describes it,
“I saw two shades frozen in a single hole
packed so close, one head hooded the other one;
the way the starving devour their bread, the soul
above had clenched the other with his teeth
where the brain meets the nape.” (Canto XXXII, lines 21-25)[4]
The reason for Ugolino’s place in the ninth circle of hell is clear. However, the meaning behind the way that Dante chooses to depict him in the poem is open to interpretation. For example, why is it that Ugolino should spend eternity gnawing on the head of his betrayer? In her book, The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy, Joan Ferrante interprets the meaning of Ugolino’s gnawing of Ruggiero head as Ugolino’s hatred for the man who did him in being so strong that he is compelled to “devour even what has no substance.”[5] Ugolino, though punished for his betrayal of his people, is allowed some closure for the betrayal that he himself was forced to suffer under Ruggiero, when he is allowed to act as Ruggiero’s torturer for eternity. “Both are suffering the torments of the damned in the traitors’ hell; but Ugolino is given the right to oppress … Archbishop Ruggiero with a ghastly eternal punishment which fits his crime.”[6] Ruggiero betrayed his former partner and forced Ugolino and his heirs to starve to death, so in effect, he is to serve as food for Ugolino, for eternity. At the same time, however, Ugolino is unable to actually consume Ruggiero, as being dead he has no body, so Ugolino is to spend eternity starving to death, constantly reliving in hell the punishment that he served in life for the same crimes.
[edit] The Legend of Ugolino and his Children
It is believed that Dante’s allusion to cannibalism in canto XXXIII may have been what started the Ugolino legend:
… And I,
Already going blind, groped over my brood
Calling to them, though I had watched them die,
For two long days. And then the hunger had more
Power than even sorrow over me (Canto XXXIII, ln. 70-73)[7]
Ever since Dante’s portrayal of Ugolino’s imprisonment in the aptly named Famine Tower of Pisa, rumors have circulated concerning whether or not Ugolino may have eaten his children and grandchildren in order to stay alive. Popular belief in Italian culture stipulates that he ate his children after they died, extending his life by two days. However, at the time of his imprisonment, Ugolino was seventy and not in good health, while his children ranged in ages from twenty to forty, bringing the myth and Dante’s allusion into question.
Reference to the Eucharist, a main theme in Dante’s text, (a theme that appears again in Canto XXXIII with the eating of Ruggeri’s head and later in Canto XXXIV with a masticating Satan) is illustrated when Ugolino’s children offer themselves to save him,
‘Father our pain’, they said,
‘Will lesson if you eat us you are the one
Who clothed us with this wretched flesh: we plead
For you to be the one who strips it away’ (Canto XXXIII, ln. 56-59).
In 2002 Francesco Mallegni of the University of Pisa, a paleoanthropologist renown in his field, conducted DNA testing on the recently excavated bodies of Count Ugolino and his children and grandchildren who were condemned to the Famine Tower.[8] After centuries of assumed cannibalism, the DNA evidence derived from Ugolino’s ribs proved that Ugolino had not consumed human flesh, or any meat whatsoever, within the last months of his life. In fact, Ugolino had lost most of his teeth, which would have made it difficult for him to partake in cannibalism. This proved that no cannibalism had taken place, relieving the Ugolino family of centuries of persecution. It also went to further the belief that Dante used the figure of Ugolino purely for his own literary end.
[edit] Works Cited:
1. “Count Ugolino of Pisa.” Bentley’s Miscellany 55 (1864): 173-78.
2. Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno. Translated and edited by Robert Pinsky. New York: Farror, Straus and Giroux, 1996.
3. Ferrante, Joan M. The Political Vision of the Devine Comedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
4. Yates, Frances A. “Transformations of Dante’s Ugolino.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14 (1951): 92-117.
5. Nicole Martinelli, “Dante and the Cannibal Count,” Newsweek, http://nicolemartinelli.com/wordpress/wp-content/ugolino2.pdf > (1 February 2007)
[edit] Works Consulted:
Hollander, Robert. “Inferno XXXIII, 37-74: Ugolino’s Importunity.” Speculum 59 (July.,1984): 549-55.
Spencer, Theodore. “The Story of Ugolino in Dante and Chaucer.” Speculum 9 (Jul.,1934): 295-301.
Toynbee, Paget, A Dictionary of the Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante, Oxford University Press 1968. http://princeton.edu/dante/ (1 February 2007)
Gilbert, Allan H. Dante’s Conception of Justice. Duke: Duke University Press, 1925.
Chub, Thomas Caldecot. Dante and His World. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 1996.
Raffa, Guy P. 2002. Circle 9, Cantos 31-34. The Universtiy of Texas at Austin. http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/circle9.html#ugolino
Hollander, Robert. 1997. Circle 9. The Trustees of Princeton University. http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/index.html
Miller, James. 2005. Dante & the Unorthodox; The Aesthetics of Transgression. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid University Press.
Categories: Dante | Inferno | Ugolino
