Commentary Purg V 89-90

Unlike Jacopo del Cassero, who hopes that his relatives and friends will pray for him ([Purg V 71]), Buonconte realizes that his wife, Giovanna, and other family members have no concern for him.  Unlike Jacopo and others of his band, he has been devoid of the hope that has urged the rest to petition Dante for his aid.  Now he finds hope in this visitor from the world of the living.  This poem, which summarizes its purpose as being to make the living pray better ([Par I 35-36]), nowhere better indicates this purpose than in ante-purgatory in such scenes as these.  It is undoubtedly the case that any number of people who read or heard the poem in the fourteenth century actually prayed for the souls of those whom Dante reports as needing such prayer.