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| Toynbee "Ruggieri, Arcivèscovo" |
Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, Ghibelline archbishop of Pisa (1278-1295),
son of Ubaldino de la Pila
([Purg. xxiv. 29]), nephew of the famous Ghibelline Cardinal
Ottaviano degli Ubaldini
([Inf. x. 120]), and first cousin of Ugolin d'Azzo
([Purg. xiv. 105])
[Ubaldini:
Table XXIX], it was through his double-dealing that
the Guelph Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, with his sons and
grandsons, was imprisoned and starved to death in the Tower of
Famine at Pisa.
In the turn of events of June 1288, with the
Ghibelline party suddenly in the ascendancy in Pisa and Archbishop
R. its chief, Nino Visconti fled the city while Count Ugolino, who
had secret and treacherous leanings toward the Ghibellines,
retired to Settimo. From there he was invited by the archbishop
and his faction to return to Pisa, to join forces with them, and
he, 'trusting in him', returned only to be betrayed and imprisoned
the next day by R., and eventually nailed in the tower to starve
to death. Archbishop R. would seem rightly to belong to the next,
third, division of Cocytus, Tolomea, rather than to Antenora,
since his betrayal would appear to be of a 'guest', i.e. Ugolino,
invited by him to return to Pisa. Perhaps the pair are for that
reason placed so near the boundary of Tolomea, with the archbishop
thus strikingly out of place as being consigned to Ugolino in
Antenora, to serve as food for the man whom he starved.
[Ugolino, Conte:
Nino.]
D. places him, together with Ugolino, among the Traitors in
Antenora, the second division of Circle IX of Hell, where those
who have betrayed their country are punished, Ruggieri being below
Ugolino, just on the confines of the next division, Tolomea, the
place assigned to those who have betrayed their associates,
[Inf. xxxiii. 14]; (R. and Ugolino) duo,
[Inf. xxxii. 125]; l'altro,
[Inf. xxxii. 126],
[Inf. xxxii. 128]; colui,
[Inf. xxxii. 134]; lui,
[Inf. xxxii. 136]; il traditor,
[Inf. xxxiii. 8]; questi,
[Inf. xxxiii. 14]; lui,
[Inf. xxxiii. 17]; questi,
[Inf. xxxiii. 28]
[Antenora:
Tolomea:
Traditori] .
After leaving Bocca degli Abati, as they pass on their way through
Antenora, D. and Virgil see two sinners frozen one above the other
in the same hole, the upper one of whom (Ugolino) is gnawing the
head of the lower (Ruggieri)
([Inf. xxxii. 124-132]); D. asks the former
the reason of this, and who he and his victim are
([Inf. xxxii. 133-139]); thereupon Ugolino, lifting his mouth from the skull, names himself and the archbishop, and tells the story of his betrayal by the latter, and of the cruel way in which he and his sons and grandsons were starved to death (p Inf. xxxiii. 1-75); having finished his narrative, he again sets his teeth into the archbishop's skull (p Inf. xxxiii. 76-78*).
©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