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| Toynbee "Alberto della Scala" |
lord of Verona, 1277-1301; referred to
by the abbot of San Zeno in Circle V of Purgatory as having 'one
foot in the grave already' [i.e. in 1300, the assumed date of the
Journey],
[Purg. xviii. 121]; the abbot goes on to refer to
Alberto's appointment of his illegitimate son Giuseppe, whom he
describes as 'deformed in his whole body and worse in mind', to
the
abbacy of San Zeno (quel monastero), an appointment which
he will shortly repent in Hell
([Purg. xviii. 122-126]).
[Zeno, San].
Alberto, who was at that date an old man, died on Sept. 1O, 1301.
Besides this illegitimate son, whose tenure of the abbacy of San
Zeno (1292-1314) coincided in part, as Philalethes points out,
with
D.'s sojourn at Verona - - he had three legitimate sons, who
succeeded
him one after the other in the lordship of Verona, viz. Bartolomeo
(d. March 8, 1303/4), Albuino (d. Nov. 29, 1311) and Can Grande,
D.'s host at Verona.
[Scala, Della:
Table XXVIII.]
©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