Toynbee "Benincasa d'Arezzo"
Benincasa da Laterina (in the upper Val d'Arno), a judge of Arezzo; according to the old commentators, while acting as assessor for the podestà of Siena, he sentenced to death a brother (and an uncle, according to some sources) of Ghino di Tacco, a famous robber and highwayman of Siena, in revenge Ghino stabbed him while he was sitting in the papal audit office at Rome, whither he had got himself transferred from Siena, at the expiry of his term there, in order to be out of Ghino's reach.

D. places B. in Ante-Purgatory, among those who died a violent death, without absolution, but repented at the last moment, referring to him as l'Aretin che da le braccia / fiere di Ghin di Tacco ebbe la morte, [Purg. vi. 13-14]. [Ghin di Tacco.]

Benvenuto, who describes Benincasa as a great lawyer, relates that on one occasion, being questioned on a point of law by some of his pupils at Bologna, he referred them contemptuously to their own Accursius, who he said had befouled the whole corpus juris:

Hic poëta . . . nominat unum magnum jurisconsultum de Aretio, qui fuit tempore illo famosus et acutus in civili sapientia, audax nimis. Unde semel interrogatus a scholaribus suis Bononiae de quodam puncto juris non erubuit dicere: Ite, ite ad Accursium, qui imbractavit totum corpus juris. . . .Hic vocatus est dominus Benincasa . . . et fmt de uno castello comitatus Areti quod dicitur Latenna.

©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