Ubaldin dalla Pila

Profile

He belonged to the noble Ghibelline Ubaldini family of the branch della Pila, which took its name from a castle in the Mugello. He is cited in Purgatorio XXIV, v. 29, in the survey of the gluttonous pronounced by the poet Bonagiunta Orbicciani. The notes to the passage recall him as the father of Archbishop Ruggieri and the brother of Cardinal Ottaviano, both placed in Hell. After the battle of Montaperti, at the council of Empoli, he was among those who proposed the destruction of Florence. He died in the last decade of the thirteenth century. The ancient sources insist on his greed, handed down in particular by an anecdote attributed to Lana, in which a steward announces dishes and Ubaldino always adds new ones. Sacchetti instead presents him in a novella as a man of jovial humor. His name is joined in the tercet to that of Bonifazio dei Fieschi, Archbishop of Ravenna, and is placed among the penitents of the sixth terrace of Purgatory dedicated to the gluttonous, where Dante meets and recognizes the souls.