Maestro Adamo

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Maestro Adamo is one of the counterfeiters punished in the eighth ditch. The character, called by the ancients mostly from Brescia or from Bologna, has been identified with good probability as the «magistro Adam de Anglia familiare comitum Romena», cited in a Bolognese document of 1277, with an academic title and coming from England. The note to verse 49 signals his presence as the master episode of canto XXX, introduced from v. 49 onward. The note to verse 61 explains that the word «miseria», joined to his name emphasized in the verse, is the dominant theme of his speech and of his entire figure. Verse 61 of the Commedia explicitly recalls him with the form «a la miseria del maestro Adamo». Maestro Adamo presents himself as dropsical: the note to vv. 50-1 describes the groin severed from the other side of the body, and the note to v. 52 recalls dropsy, a disease that swells the belly through fluid retention. He also confesses to having counterfeited the Florentine coin at the instigation of the counts of Romena.