Bellincion Berti

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Bellincion Berti is a historical figure remembered by Cacciaguida in Canto XV of Paradiso, within the context of the evocation of the ancient, sober, and modest Florence. His name is mentioned by Cacciaguida among the citizens who symbolized the temperance and virtue of primitive Florence, in a passage in which Dante's great-great-grandfather compares the rarity, in his own time, of a morally exemplary woman or man to the possible existence, in the present age, of an unchaste woman or a politically corrupt man. The notes to the canto also link Bellincion Berti dei Ravignani to Cacciaguida's family, indicating that one of his daughters, sister of the good Gualdrada, married Alighiero, Cacciaguida's son and progenitor of the Alighieri house, a sign of the high social standing of the Ravignani family, which later progressively declined.