Monteaperti

Description

The name Montaperti appears in the Commedia in close connection with the great struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines that marked Florentine and Tuscan history in the thirteenth century. The source is line 81 of canto XXXII of the Inferno, in which the word recurs as a term of historical comparison in the speech of a damned soul. The standard commentaries repeatedly cite Montaperti as the setting of the battle of 1260, in which the Ghibelline forces, supported by Manfred of Swabia and allied with the Sienese, won a crushing victory over the Florentine Guelphs. To this event are linked central figures of the poem: Farinata degli Uberti, the Ghibelline leader who is the protagonist of canto X, and Bocca degli Abati, remembered as the traitor who contributed to the Guelph defeat. Thus the place-name is intertwined with the civic and moral themes that run through the canticle, serving as a reference to a decisive turning point in the conflict between the factions.