val di magra

Description

In Canto XXIV of the Inferno, Vanni Fucci, within the prophecy against Pistoia, employs figurative language of a biblical kind and likens the imminent clash to a storm unleashed by Mars. The god of war, the notes explain, "draws forth (Tragge, trae fuori) from Val di Magra (the Lunigiana) a thunderbolt (igneous vapor, according to the science of that time) wrapped in dark clouds, harbingers of tempest," which will strike with harsh battle upon Campo Piceno, the Pistoian territory. The image of the "igneous vapor" struggling with the watery vapors of the clouds recalls the cosmographic treatment in the Composizione del Mondo of Ristoro d'Arezzo, to which the notes refer as a probable source for Dante. The Val di Magra, identified with the Lunigiana, is thus linked to the world of exiles and political alliances that runs through the Commedia.