Guido Guerra V (1220-1272) was a politician from Florence, Italy. Aligned with the Guelph faction, Guerra had a prominent role in the political conflicts of mid-thirteenth century Tuscany. He was admired by Dante Alighieri, who granted him honor in the Divine Comedy , even though he placed Guerra in Hell among sinners of sodomy. [1]
Descended from the house of Conti Guidi, Guerra was the son of Count Marcovaldo and Beatrice degli Alberti di Capraia, and grandson of Guido Guerra IV and Gualdrada de' Ravignani. [2] [3]
Guerra was a Florentine politician, closely aligned with the Guelph faction. In the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, Florence was fought over by two rival factions, the Guelphs, who believed in the authority of the Church, and the Ghibellines, who believed in the authority of the monarchy and Empire. [4] Guerra was connected with the Catholic Church, as his political faction believed in the power of the Church, and he was supported and encouraged by Pope Innocent IV. [3] In this role, Guido received the title of Capitaneus pro Ecclesia ("Captain of the Church") in 1248. [3]
In 1258, the Guelphs held the power in Florence and expelled the Ghibellines from the city. Later on, the Ghibellines, led by Provenzano Salvani, retook Florence in one of the bloodiest battles in the history of medieval Italy, the Battle of Montaperti of 1260. [4] While in power, with fellow Guelph Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, Guerra consuls the Florentines to not engage in open battle in Siena in the hopes of avoiding the defeat of Montaperti. [5] After the battle, Guerra found refuge in nearby Romagna until he was able to return. [2]
A few years later, Guerra led an army of four hundred Florentine Guelphs, aided by the cavalry, in the reclaiming of Florentine from the Ghibellines, which culminated in the Battle of Benevento in 1266. In this battle, the Florentine Guelphs, helped by Anjou cavalry, succeeded in defeating the Ghibellines. In battle, they killed King Manfred, and thus reclaimed Florence. [4]
After the Battle of Benevento, Guerra continued to participate in the politics of Florence. He advocated for the inclusion of the middle class (popolo) in the city governance, but this reform was firmly ostracized and eventually revoked due to the pressure of the papal curia. [3] Having reached the end of his life, Guerra died in 1272 in his castle in Montevarchi, near Arezzo. [3]
Guerra appears as a character in Dante’s Divine Comedy in Inferno , Canto XVI, when Dante and Virgil encounter those punished for sins of sodomy. [5] Guido appears accompanied by fellow Sodomites, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi and Iacopo Rusticucci, who speaks for all three. [1]
According to Dante and medieval Christian views of sexuality, the Sodomites sinned against nature, using practices designed for reproduction for other uses and pleasure. Sinners are not punished for homosexuality, but instead for sodomy, evidenced by the presence of homosexuals in Purgatory. [6] As such, their punishment is to run around on burning sand as they were unable to obey God's commandments regarding reproduction, misusing it for their own pleasure. They run under a rain of fire, a reflection upon the unnatural nature of their acts. [1]
Dante grants Guerra, Aldobrandi, and Rusticucci a measure of respect, and is moved by their suffering. He portrays them "good" men condemned to Hell. [5]
Dante Alighieri, most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and widely known and often referred to in English mononymously as Dante, was an Italian poet, writer, and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.
The Guelphs and Ghibellines were factions supporting respectively the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor in the Italian city-states of Central Italy and Northern Italy during the Middle Ages.
Brunetto Latini was an Italian philosopher, scholar, notary, politician and statesman. He was a teacher and friend of Dante Alighieri.
Guido Cavalcanti was an Italian poet. He was also a friend and intellectual influence on Dante Alighieri.
The Battle of Campaldino was fought between the Guelphs and Ghibellines on 11 June 1289. Mixed bands of pro-papal Guelf forces of Florence and allies, Pistoia, Lucca, Siena, and Prato, all loosely commanded by the paid condottiero Amerigo di Narbona with his own professional following, met a Ghibelline force from Arezzo including the perhaps reluctant bishop, Guglielmino degli Ubertini, in the plain of Campaldino, which leads from Pratovecchio to Poppi, part of the Tuscan countryside along the upper Arno called the Casentino. One of the combatants on the Guelph side was Dante Alighieri, twenty-four years old at the time.
Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti was a Florentine Epicurean philosopher and father of Guido Cavalcanti, a close friend of Dante Alighieri.
The Battle of Montaperti was fought on 4 September 1260 between Florence and Siena in Tuscany as part of the conflict between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. The Florentines were routed. It was the bloodiest battle fought in Medieval Italy, with more than 10,000 fatalities. An act of treachery during the battle is recorded by Dante Alighieri in the Inferno section of the Divine Comedy.
Manente degli Uberti, known as Farinata degli Uberti, was an Italian aristocrat and military leader of the Ghibelline faction in Florence. He was considered to be a heretic by some of his contemporaries, including Dante Alighieri, who mentioned Farinata in his Inferno.
The Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also called the Order of Saint Mary of the Tower or the Order of the Knights of the Mother of God, commonly the Knights of Saint Mary, was a military order founded in 1261. The order received its rule from Pope Urban IV, who expressly states the purpose of the organisation and the rights and obligations of its members:
[The members of the order] are to be allowed to bear arms for the defence of the catholic faith and ecclesiastical freedom, when specifically required to do so by the Roman church. For subduing civil discords they may carry only defensive weapons, provided they have the permission of the diocesan.
Iacopo Rusticucci was a Guelph politician and accomplished orator who lived and worked in Florence, Italy in the 13th century. Rusticucci is realized historically primarily in relation to the Adimari family, who wielded much power and prestige in thirteenth-century Florence, and to whom it is thought Rusticucci was a close companion, representative, and perhaps lawyer. Despite his association with men born into high political and social rank, Rusticucci was not born into nobility, and nothing is known of his ancestors or predecessors. The exact dates of his birth and death are unknown.
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The Florentine banking family of the Cerchi, minor nobles of the Valdarno, with a seat especially at Acone near Pontassieve, settled in Florence in the early thirteenth century and increased their fortunes. The family became the heads of a consortium of the prominent Guelfs that securely controlled Florence after the battle of Benevento in 1266. In Florence, the Cerchi purchased some of the ancient structures in the closely packed inner city formerly belonging to the counts Guidi, cheek-by-jowl with the proud Florentine family of the Donati, with whom their growing mutual antagonism was expressed in violent episodes that polarized Florence within a couple of decades in a virtual civil war that aligned behind two captains, Corso Donati of the Neri Guelf faction— the "Black" Guelfs of the old noble oligarchy— and Vieri de' Cerchi of the Bianchi, the moderate party that represented itself as champions of working people. The resulting violence lasted, with irruptions of tranquility, into the fourteenth century.
Corso Donati was a politician and leader of the Black Guelph faction in 13th- and early 14th- century Florence.
Gualdrada Berti dei Ravignani was a member of the Ghibelline nobility of twelfth-century Florence, Italy. A descendant of the Ravignani family and daughter of the powerful Bellincione Berti, Gualdrada later married into the Conti Guido family. Her character as a pure and virtuous Florentine woman is called upon by many late medieval Italian authors, including Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Giovanni Villani.
Inferno is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century narrative poem The Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. The Inferno describes the journey of a fictionalised version of Dante himself through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is the "realm [...] of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen". As an allegory, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin.
The battle of Colle di Val d'Elsa took place between 16 and 17 June 1269 at Colle di Val d'Elsa between the Ghibelline troops of Siena and the Guelph troops of Charles of Anjou and Florence, represented by fewer than 200 knights commanded by Neri de' Bardi.
Poppi Castle is a medieval castle in Poppi, Tuscany, Italy, formerly the property of the noble Guidi family.
Bonconte I da Montefeltro was an Italian Ghibelline general. He led Ghibelline forces in several engagements until his battlefield death. Dante Alighieri featured Montefeltro as a character in the Divine Comedy.
The third circle of hell is depicted in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the first part of the 14th-century poem Divine Comedy. Inferno tells the story of Dante's journey through a vision of the Christian hell ordered into nine circles corresponding to classifications of sin; the third circle represents the sin of gluttony, where the souls of the gluttonous are punished in a realm of icy mud.
