Toynbee "Broccia, Pier da la"
Pierre de la Brosse, according to tradition, a surgeon of low birth, but actually a gentleman of Touraine of honourable extraction, who was favourite and chamberlain of Philip III of France. He had already held the office of chamberlain to Philip's father, Louis IX, whom he accompanied on his last expedition to the East, which ended in the king's death at Tunis in 1270. On the sudden death in 1276 of the heir to the throne, Louis, Philip's son by his first wife, Isabella of Aragon, an accusation was brought against the queen, Marie of Brabant, of having poisoned Louis, in order to secure the succession of her own son, among her accusers being Pierre de la Brosse.

L'an de grace mil deux cens soixante seize, avint que Loys le premier fils le roy Phelippe mouru et fu empoisonné, ainsi comme aucuns dient. Le roy en fu en souspeçon, et ceste souspeçon mist en son cuer Pierre de la Broce, son maistre chambellenc: car il maintenoit et disoit en derrenier que ce avoit fait la royne, et que elle feroit, se elle povoit, mourir les autres, pour ce que le royaume peust venir aux enfans qui estoient de son corps. (Grandes Chroniques de France: Philippe III, ch. xxii.)

Not long afterwards Pierre was suddenly arrested by order of the king at Vincennes, and imprisoned at Janville, in the Beauvaisis. From thence he was removed to Paris, where he was condemned and sentenced to death before an assembly of the nobles, and hanged by the common hangman, in the presence of the dukes of Burgundy and Brabant and of the count of Artois, June 30, 1278. The suddenness and ignominy of his execution appear to have caused great wonder and consternation, especially as the charge on which he was condemned was not made known. According to the popular account he had been accused by the queen of an attempt upon her chastity. The truth seems to be that he was hanged on a charge of treasonable correspondence with Alfonso X, king of Castile, with whom Philip was at war, the intercepted letters on which the charge was based having, it is alleged, been forged at the instance of the queen. It is at any rate certain that Pierre was an object of envy and hatred to the great nobles of Philip's court, and it is likely enough that they made common cause with the queen in bringing about his fall.

D. places Pierre de la Brosse in AntePurgatory among those who put off repentance, [Purg. vi. 22] [Antipurgatorio]; and evidently regarded him as innocent, for he speaks of his spirit as having been divided from his body 'for spite and envy, not for any fault committed' ([Purg. vi. 19-21]); at the same time he implies that Marie of Brabant was guilty of his death, since he warns her to repent of her crime before it is too late (she being still alive at the time he wrote), lest she should be consigned to a worse place than Pierre, namely to Hell ([Purg. vi. 22-24]) [Brabante]. Benvenuto states that D. satisfied himself of Pierre's innocence while he was in Paris:

Dantes, qui fuit Parisius, post exilium suum, explorata diligenter veritate huius rei, dignum duxit, ipsum ponere salvum in purgatorio, et reddere sibi bonam famam, sicut fecerat Petro de Vineis in inferno.

©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