Focaccia

Profile

Focaccia is mentioned in Inferno XXXII, v. 63, in the passage where the poet is enumerating figures of traitors placed in the infernal ice. An authoritative note on the same canto identifies this Focaccia with Vanni dei Cancellieri of Pistoia, of the White faction, whose criminal obstinacy is recalled by the Storie Pistoresi. According to the same note, Focaccia treacherously killed his cousin Detto dei Cancellieri, of the Black faction, and committed other crimes between 1286 and 1300. The note on the immediately preceding verse also clarifies that the character Dante associates with Mordred, son of King Arthur, is presented as pierced by a spear-thrust so violent as to split open both his chest and his shadow, and that this hero of the legend of the Round Table is placed by Dante himself between the Conti Alberti and Focaccia, elevating his story from the municipal to the universal-historical sphere.