Rinier Pazzo

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Rinier Pazzo appears in verse 137 of Canto XII of the Inferno, paired with Rinier da Corneto in a list of bandits that the centaur Nessus points out to Dante and Virgil. The critical notes to the canto identify him with one of the Pazzi of Valdarno, indicated as one of the leaders of the Ghibelline party in Tuscany in the mid-thirteenth century, who with his men dominated the roads of the Valdarno as far as Arezzo. The same apparatus recalls that he was excommunicated in 1268 for having attacked and robbed an embassy of the king of Castile headed for Rome, led by Bishop Silvense, who was killed. He is further remembered as having been declared a rebel by the Commune of Florence and again struck with a ban by the Signoria in 1280, on the occasion of the peace of Cardinal Latino, against those who had committed that act of bloodshed in the Valdarno. The note lastly emphasizes that these events, impressed in the memory of the adolescent Dante, resurface in the Commedia when it becomes necessary to name bandits.