Commentary Inf X 120

'Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, member of a powerful Tuscan Ghibelline family, known to his contemporaries as "the Cardinal" par excellence, was brother of Ubaldino della Pila ([Purg XXIV 29]) and uncle of the Archbishop Ruggieri ([Inf XXXIII 14]); he was made Bishop of Bologna in 1240, when he was under thirty, by special dispensation of Pope Gregory IX, and in 1244 he was created Cardinal by Innocent IV at the Council of Lyons; he was papal legate in Lombardy, and died in 1272. [He] was suspected of favouring the imperial party, and is credited with a saying: "If I have a soul, I have lost it a thousand times for the Ghibellines"' (passage taken from Toynbee's article, 'Cardinale, Il'; the final lapidary sentence is cited by literally nearly every fourteenth-century commentator found in the DDP).