Dante’s Inferno – Canto 33

“Here begins the story of Count Ugolino, one of the most famous, as well as strongest, episodes of the whole poem. For simplicity and realism, and as a picture of the possibilities of human cold-heartedness, it would be hard to find its equal in all literature.”

Thus begins Courtney Langdon in his commentary, joining the chorus of others who, over the centuries, have had much information and insight to offer on this famous canto. All seriousness aside for a moment, there is black humor in Dante’s opening here. It both  conjures and completes an image from the final note of the previous canto. There, Dante was the intrepid journalist interrupting Tydeus as he chewed on the brains of Menalippus. Here, he walks into a fine restaurant and interrupts the Count who is dining on a plate of brains. Hearing Dante’s question, the count stops eating and politely dabs his mouth with a napkin before replying, invites the Poet to sit and join him, and begins his tale. Musa notes how Dante’s Italian syntax here “separates and contrasts the grotesque and the elegant in Ugolino’s actions.” But putting the humor away now, and recalling the animal comparisons Dante made in the previous canto, it’s clear that the brutally savage “feast” Dante witnesses here is a display of the ultimate depth of animal depravity to which a human can fall.

            Having stepped onto the bottom of Hell at the beginning of the previous canto, Dante related that he had difficulty finding the right words to describe a place so terrible and sinners so wicked. He appealed to the Muses to inspire him and what follows in the Count’s story is, without doubt, some of their greatest work among humans. As he begins, Ugolino clarifies Dante’s earlier request by repeating it. At the same time, having been reminded of the episode that led to his death, he lists for Dante the personal cost his request requires:  desperation, grief, and pain. And worse, the fact is that he, like Dante, must find words to describe something so terrible – they can only be spoken, let alone written, in tears.

            But we must remember that treachery is not something for the faint-hearted. It is cold like the ice here, and calculating. Is it any wonder that Ugolino feasts on brains! A clever contrapasso to match the premeditation and malice aforethought of the treachery highlighted in what is about to be recounted. At the same time, Ugolino understands perfectly the infamy that goes with being discovered as a traitor, and like Camicion de’Pazzi and Buoso da Durea in the previous canto, he’s willing to shine the brilliant light of day on the traitor he gnaws at. And in a wickedly perverse way, this gives him the impetus to continue. He would have the words of his story become “seeds of infamy” that will grow into the foul memory of the man upon whom he feasts.

“Linguistic commentators point to the fact that the speech of Dante in the last seven lines of Canto 32 contain in the original Italian no less than seven words which distinctly belong to the dialect of Florence.”

Furthermore, at the end of the previous canto, Dante asked Ugolino to trust him to tell his story – the secret, private, ghastly part of the story that no one witnessed. By allowing Dante (and we, the readers) to be the judge in the “case” he is about to present, Ugolino puts his trust in the Poet. In other words, Dante has complete literary license to tell the truth or to fabricate something entirely different. To a certain extent, of course, Ugolino is hoping to win Dante’s sympathy as did Francesca in Canto 5 who, in words not unlike Ugolino’s, told the Poet: “There’s no greater pain than remembering happy times when you’re deep in grief.” In the Italian, both Francesca and Ugolino also refer to their deaths as “offenses” against them as a way to subtly focus their stories on themselves and highlight their innocence. So, who were Ugolino and Ruggieri?

            Ugolino della Gherardesca (ca. 1220-1289), the Count of Donoratico (about 40 miles south of Pisa), was a member of a noble Ghibelline family in Guelf-controlled Pisa. From around the time he was 30 years old he played a significant role in the history of Pisa, in and out of the political scene there, and also exiled several times (but returned) for various intrigues involving family, power, and party – not to mention murder. At one point he was appointed as the Podestà of the city. In spite of his family’s Ghibelline tradition, Ugolino was at one time the head of one of the two Guelf factions in the city. His nephew, Nino Visconti, was head of the other faction. (We will meet Nino in Canto 8 of the Purgatorio.)  Wanting supreme power for himself, Ugolino apparently conspired with the leader of the Ghibellines, Archbishop Ruggieri (whose brains he here feasts on). Trusting Ruggieri completely, together they successfully drove Nino out of Pisa. But this action weakened the Pisan Guelfs. Seizing upon this opportunity, Ruggieri made the appearance of supporting Ugolino. However, in August 1288 the Archbishop unleashed the pent-up anger of the Ghibellines, and with them orchestrated an attack on Ugolino’s palace joined by the leading Ghibelline families of Pisa, the Lanfranchi, Sismondi, and Gualandi. At that point, Ruggieri  betrayed Ugolino, accusing him of treason by engaging in secret negotiations with Pisa’s enemies, Florence and Lucca, and in the process ceding to them certain strategic Pisan castles and strongholds. (Apparently, these transactions were legitimate.) Ugolino was arrested in the uprising along with his two sons and two grandsons. They were ultimately locked in a tower belonging to the Gualandi in the present-day Piazza dei Cavalieri, and the keys were thrown into the Arno River. (The tower is gone, but the building it was attached to, not far from Pisa’s Leaning Tower, is still standing.) In March of 1289 the tower was nailed shut by order of the Archbishop and Ugolino and his sons and grandsons were starved to death. After this, the tower where they died was known as the Torre del fame, Tower of Hunger. One account has it that their bodies were taken out and burned. Another has it that the bodies were wrapped up and hastily buried at the nearby church of the Franciscans. Still another tells us that, seeing its Pisan allies weakened, the Florentine Guelfs, under the leadership of Guido da Montefeltro (see Canto 27), arrived in Pisa at or about the same time Ugolino and the four boys died. He may or may not have known about them and left them to starve nonetheless.

            Ruggieri degli Ubaldini (d. September 15, 1295) was born into a powerful family of  Mugello (20 miles NE of Florence). He was the son of Ubaldino della Pila (noted among the gluttons in Purg. 24), brother of Ottaviano (the Younger) Ubaldini, bishop of Bologna, nephew of the influential Ghibelline Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini of Bologna (most likely “the Cardinal” mentioned by Farinata in Canto 10), and cousin of Ugolino d’Azzo (see Purg. 14). In 1278 he was named Archbishop of Pisa. A staunch Ghibelline, he became the leader of that party and was involved in several of the ups and downs of Count Ugolino’s political career noted above. And, as noted above, he betrayed Ugolino both by pretending to support him and then accusing him of treason which led to his terrible death and that of his sons and grandsons. Following Ugolino’s death, Ruggieri attempted to secure the position of Podestà for himself, but could not overcome the opposition of the Viscontis whom he had earlier connived with Ugolino to banish from Pisa. Following the widespread publication of the manner of Count Ugolino’s death and that of his sons and grandsons, Pope Nicholas IV condemned Ruggieri but he died before the Archbishop could be punished. Other sources note that Ruggieri was stripped of his ecclesiastical office and spent the rest of his life in prison.

“The original name for the tower is poetically appropriate to Ugolino’s situation. Like the hunting birds in their mew, Ugolino can be seen as an angry bird of prey, his feathers fallen, his wings useless. Once again both elegance and bestiality are suggested, an eagle-like nobility associated with inhuman cruelty.”

            The moon, by which Virgil has marked the passing of time during the journey through Hell, has also become Ugolino’s clock in the Hell of his tower. He and his sons and grandsons were imprisoned in the tower in June of 1288, and their death by starvation came about in February of the following year – after a period of some eight months.

            Only now are we told that his “boys” were actually there in the tower with him. Having awakened after his unsettling dream and hearing his boys crying for bread in their sleep, Ugolino might have wished he were like Dante at the end of Canto 30 after Virgil reprimanded him for being so engrossed in the fight between Sinon and Master Adamo. Dante said he was like someone dreaming they were in trouble and in the dream wishing that what they were dreaming were just a dream.

            Then, to tug at Dante’s sympathies more and keep the spotlight on himself, Ugolino suggests, rhetorically, that Dante would be heartless if, having heard his secret story so far, he didn’t have some compassion on him for what he was going through. Recall that at the beginning of this canto Ugolino told Dante that he would, as it were, weep the words of his sad story. Now, as his sons awaken from their fearsome dreams crying, Ugolino, in another appeal to Dante’s sympathy, suggests that he, Dante, should be weeping if he were at all human. Yet, as we will see, Ugolino has turned to stone. Hollander notes that in the space of 70 lines now, Dante has used 13 different words for weeping and grief. But, of course, Ugolino is getting ahead of himself emotionally. Worse, “cry-able,” things are yet to be recounted.

            While his frightened children weep, Ugolino cannot weep, he cannot even feign outrage because he knows he’s guilty. All he can do in his misery is turn to stone – the same stoniness that characterized him as a traitor. Even to Anselmuccio’s inquiry about his father’s well-being, Ugolino remains selfishly mute, selfishly focused on the horror of the slow death that looms before him. Anselm was actually Ugolino’s youngest grandson, about 15 years old at the time. The “-uccio” tacked onto his name is a sign of endearment and affection. Note the irony that Ugolino can refer to him affectionately and yet do nothing for him.

            The “slim ray of sunshine” that pierces the gloom of the cell surely represents the light of God, a moment of hope slicing into Ugolino’s hardened heart, where confession and repentance would bring forgiveness and eternal life. But no. He cannot see it. In the ultimate selfishness of sin, all he can see is himself reflected in the innocent faces of his children illuminated by that divine light. The pity in their faces might have saved him. But now, not only is he mute, he has gone deaf and blind. For all the raw courage that he displayed in life, at this moment when he might lift his children’s spirits with some display of strength, or even a prayer, he has nothing to give them. Then in a characteristic Italian gesture, he bites his hand – foreshadowing how he will bite into Ruggieri’s skull and lap at his brains – and soon something more terrible!

            Given the piety of the day, it would have been common, as it is today, to give the dying prisoners the consolation of some spiritual accompaniment at the ultimate moment of their lives. All the more wicked is the Archbishop Ruggieri for denying Ugolino at least the invitation to confess and repent, so that in the end he is starved to death both physically and spiritually. Early commentaries like the Ottimo Commento of 1333, suggest that Ugolino did, in fact, ask for a priest but was refused. Acknowledging this, Hollander makes a fascinating suggestion in his commentary: “Had Dante included such a detail, his Ugolino would have seemed a much different man.”

            Ugolino’s rhetorical outburst here will be echoed by Dante at the end of this story. He may want the stony earth to open and put them out of their misery, but he fails to realize that opening his own stony heart to meet the tender hearts of his children would save him. All through here Dante surely has in mind a passage from Seneca’s tragedy of Thyestes who, unknowingly, ate his children served to him at a banquet by his wicked brother: “Canst thou endure, O Earth, to bear a crime so monstrous? Why dost not burst asunder and plunge thee down to the infernal Stygian shades and, by a huge opening to void chaos, snatch his kingdom with its king away?” (ll.1006-1009).

            But we must also take a moment to appreciate the beauty in this scene that Ugolino in his blindness tragically misses – to his eternal regret. Centuries of commentators have pointed to this, and Christian readers can hardly fail to recognize the powerful Eucharistic overtones in this prison scene that beg, in the words of Jesus, to be taken and eaten, because “my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (Jn 6:55). When the thin ray of sunlight penetrates the cell, it is like the lighting of a candle at the start of a sacred ritual. There is a congregation of only one, and that is Ugolino. The altar is the floor of the cell, and upon it sits the pure sacrifice of his children’s innocent lives which they willingly offer up in order to literally and spiritually “save” him. The prayer of offering is simply this: “It was you who gave us flesh – here, take it and eat from us.” There is nothing to match the pathos of this moment in Dante’s Inferno, not even the moving story of Francesca da Rimini that caused him to faint at the end of Canto 5. Readers are often fooled, as Dante was, by the “romantic” overtones of Francesca’s story. But here, in his maturity, he presents the starkness of rejection and despair in the face of overwhelming redemption. Here, at the penultimate moment of his life, Ugolino knows he’s going to die, but tragically,  willingly, chooses eternal death. Consider at this point the question Jesus puts to his audience in St. Luke’s Gospel: “If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will you give him a stone?” (11:11). Ugolino gives his children the stone. No soul is in Hell by accident; every one of them is here by choice!

            It takes two more days (eight days in all) for Ugolino to die, but not before he ends his story with an enigmatic statement: “…hunger overpowered my grief.” Scholars and readers alike have struggled over this line. Is he saying that his grief was ended by his hunger – meaning that he died of hunger? Or is he saying that his hunger was stronger than his grief, and he ate from his children’s bodies? For sure, he does not mean to suggest that he died of grief. The fact that Ugolino was eating Ruggieri’s brains when Dante interrupted him to tell this story might lead one to think that he resorted to cannibalism at the end, stacking one horror upon another. Instead, Dante leaves the matter to our imagination while, as we shall see, Ugolino immediately resumes his eternal “meal”! Some of this controversy, of course,  centers around Dante’s actual words. In this instance he uses the word digiuno, which means “fasting,” not hunger. In his commentary, W.W. Vernon writes: “Digiuno is not hunger, it is ‘abstinence from food,’ which impairs the strength, rather than the desire for food which impels a man to seize even upon that from which nature revolts.” Musa, on the other hand, offers a brilliant defense of the cannibal theory in his commentary:

“Almost all the early commentators agree with Benvenuto that this line refers to Ugolino’s death—that hunger killed him as grief could not. Several more recent commentators, however (myself among them), see the line as meaning that hunger brought Ugolino to cannibalize his sons. According to Moliterno (1984, 1989), the key to understanding the perfidy and blasphemy perpetrated by Ugolino lies in his degradation of the “natural” functions of the human mouth. The explicit cannibalism of the next lines takes place just a short distance from Lucifer’s giant mandibles and eternally perverts the positive eating function of the mouth, degrading humanity to the level of fang and claw. It operates as an infernal parody of community and communion, which is the perfect expression of the mouth’s functions. Moreover, Ugolino’s speech inverts the communicative function of the human mouth in an implicit parody of the Pater Noster, the communion prayer which both thanks God for his paternal care and affirms human solidarity through mutual forgiveness. Thus, far from being a father much wronged, Ugolino is depicted as a rapacious monster, the ultimate emblem of politics as infanticide.”

Yet, we do know from historical records that five dead bodies were removed from the tower – one suggests that they were taken away and burned, another tells us that they were buried in a nearby church, and another notes having seen chains on their legs. No one, at the time, mentions what would have been sensational – that there was evidence of chewing on the bodies. Dante plays his cards close to his vest. In the early 2000s, a Pisan anthropologist discovered the five bodies in a church that are most likely Ugolino and his sons and grandsons. Tests suggest that they may not have actually starved to death, but may have died from several months of malnourishment. Some signs on the skeletons seem to indicate that Ugolino may have sustained a blow to the head, but it is not certain that it was fatal. And there is tenuous evidence that some or all the boys may have been killed as an act of mercy.

            A final note: Dante’s Commedia has generated a virtual ocean of great art on almost every canto in the poem – this one included, and a search for images on the Internet will reward one with enjoyment and much food for the imagination.

“What curse can I invoke upon that ruthless land in reward for so great a crime? May Nile reverse his waters and be stayed in the region where he rises; may the barren fields crave winter rains; and may all the soil break up into the crumbling sands of Ethiopia.”

Recall how he called for the destruction of the city of Pistoia at the beginning of Canto 25 after his encounter with Vanni Fucci, who made the “figs” at God.

            Now that we are virtually at the bottom of Hell, it may be worth pausing for a moment to review or reconsider exactly how the damned actually get from Minos, the judge in Canto 5, to their assigned places in one of the nine circles. In Canto 5:15, we read that, after hearing and judging each sinner, Minos “throws,” “hurls,” “casts,” “whirls,”  “flings,” “pitches,” or “casts” each sinner down. However, Dante’s exact words for this action are rather opaque, and translators choose many different verbs to render what seems in the end to be a rather mechanical process. There’s hearing, judging, and then…some form of hurling down. But Dante never tells us how that works. With the central well of Hell generally somewhere within view at various times throughout the journey, one might expect to see sinners falling down within it from above. But we don’t seem to be told much about this. Although, in Canto 31:94 Master Adamo, in describing how he arrived in the bolgia of the counterfeiters uses the word piovvi (rained), as in “I rained down into this ditch.” In the end, Dante seems to he happy enough to leave this detail to the reader’s imagination.

            To murder members of one’s own family, as Alberigo the traitor admits, is such a terrible form of treachery that, once committed, the soul of the murderer dies and drops to the bottom of Hell forever! But the body of that murderer continues to live – possessed by a devil – until Atropos determines the time of its natural death. Atropos was one of the three Fates in classical mythology. The first of the three was Clotho, who held the distaff on which the thread of life was wound. Lachesis was the second Fate. She spun the thread of life that was  then wound onto the distaff. And the third Fate was Atropos who, with her scissors, cut the thread.

            Over the centuries, some commentators have questioned Dante’s orthodoxy in proposing such a bold (heretical?) punishment, while others find a place for it within Christian doctrine. But Dante is a Poet, we must remember, and when he puts theological considerations into poetical language they take on fascinating qualities the purist might not see (or agree with). Without a doubt, Dante doesn’t shy away from making his companion, the reader,  cringe for a moment here and (re-)consider what a terrible sin treachery is. At the same time, there is a thread of scriptural evidence for what he proposes in the Gospel of John (13:2, 27) where we read first that “the devil had already induced Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, to hand [Jesus] over,” and then that “Satan entered him .”

            Like other traitors before him in this ninth circle, Alberigo “betrays” the identity of another nearby traitor, Branca D’Oria. Branca was a rich and powerful Ghibelline of Genoa who committed an identical treachery to Alberigo’s. In 1275, he invited his father-in-law, Michel Zanche, and several of his companions to a dinner during which he had them all butchered! Branca, who lived into his nineties, “died” four years after Dante, in 1325. One wonders what he may have thought about reading Dante’s Inferno and finding himself featured at the bottom of Hell.  (Michel Zanche was mentioned in Canto 22 as being down under the boiling pitch talking with a friend about Sardinia.

            All of these men, of course, end up in Hell. While one might be inclined to think – and probably rightly so – that the murderers got what they deserved, the murdered man, though he was a mortal sinner and deserving of Hell, might have had a later conversion of heart and sought forgiveness for his crimes if he had lived longer. We will encounter this issue early in the Purgatorio. There are sobering stories from Dante’s time, and later, of murderers who knew that their victims had committed mortal sins and deliberately killed them before they had a chance to confess so that their souls would go to Hell. All of this points to the fragility and tenuous nature of human existence, of sin and forgiveness, of Hell and Heaven – a theme that runs all through both the Inferno and the Purgatorio.

            In her commentary at this point, Dorothy Sayers writes about the loud “chorus of indignant comment about Dante’s behavior…,” and there are definitely differences of opinion about what Dante does here. But much of this might also be attributed to a misunderstanding of how Hell works. Souls in Hell are precisely where Dante finds them because they have chosen to be there by means of their sin. Having lost of the “good of the intellect” (Canto 3: 19), they forever see themselves in light of their sin. It is no longer possible for them to feel any sense of good. This is sometimes difficult for readers who are overcome with pity at various points as was Dante. In Canto 16:15, for example, Virgil curbs Dante’s affection for the three noble sodomites but still urges him to be courteous to them. Yet we must recall Virgil’s rebuke in Canto 20:28 where he tells Dante: “In this place pity lives when it’s quite dead! Who could be more wicked than he who feels sad seeing God’s Divine Judgment?”

            Finally, we want to note that Dante never tells Alberigo that he’s actually alive. If he had, the sinner would surely have refused to share any of the startling information that makes the latter part of this canto almost as interesting as the first. Not only that, Dante would have reported that Alberigo was a fool in divulging so much information about himself and others, which, of course, he does! Furthermore, since he is still “alive,” he’s actually betrayed himself!