Commentary Purg V 130-136

The six verses devoted to Pia's speech have made her one of Dante's most remembered and admired portraits -- even though we do not really know who she was, to whom she was married (nor how many times, but perhaps twice), or who killed her, or how.  For the complicated, necessarily hypothetical, and eventually unknowable status of Pia's identity and story and the possible knowledge that Dante had of them, see Armour (Armo.1993.1), pp. 120-22.  See also Giorgio Varanini, ED.1973.4, pp. 462-67.