Toynbee "Vitaliano"
name of a Paduan, whom D. places by anticipation among the Usurers in Round 3 of Circle VII of Hell, [Inf. xvii. 68]; one of them, Rinaldo degli Scrovigni, informs D. that at present he is the only native of Padua there, all the rest being Florentines, but that soon his neighbour Vitaliano will be sitting alongside him ([Inf. xvii. 67-70]). [Rinaldo degli Scrovigni: Usurai.]

The early commentators state that this was Vitaliano del Dente, who appears to have been a man of mark in Padua, where he was podestà in 1307. He is mentioned as a moneylender in several late cent. xiii documents. E. Morpurgo, however [in Dante e Padova (Padova, 1865), pp. 213 ff.], thinks the reference is to a certain Vitaliano di Jacopo Vitaliani, whom he finds mentioned in an old Paduan chronicle (supposed to have been written in 1335) as having been a great usurer, with an allusion apparently to D.'s condemnation of him to Hell:

Unus dominus Vitalianus potens et ditissimus. . . maximus usurarius, quem doctor vulgaris damnat ad inferos permanere.

He is said to have been a neighbour of the Scrovigni in Padua, which would account for Rinaldo's allusion to him as il mio vicin ([Inf. xvii. 68]). [See G. Biscaro, 'Dante e il buon Gherardo' Studi med. i (1928), 86 ff.] It is remarkable that Vitaliano is the only one of the Usurers whom D. mentions by name; all the others are indicated by the mention of their arms.

©Oxford University Press 1968. From A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante by Paget Toynbee (1968) by permission of Oxford University Press