Capocchio

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Capocchio, called «magister Capochius florentinus» by ancient commentators, is introduced by Dante in Canto XXIX of the Inferno as «the other leper», an alchemist condemned in the ditch of the falsifiers. The notes to the text attest that he had considerable fame as a forger and that he died at the stake in Siena in 1293, as a document from the city's Archivio di Stato records. According to the commentarial sources cited, he was supposedly a fellow student of Dante in a school of natural philosophy, attended in order to enroll in the guild of physicians and apothecaries; after an initial phase devoted to «true» alchemy, he then turned to «sophistical» practice, that is, to the falsification of metals. In Canto XXX he is recalled again in connection with a scene of violence involving him. The ancient tradition discusses whether he was from Siena or Florence: his lively polemic against the Sienese, gathered and echoed by Dante himself, decisively rules out a Sienese origin.