Art and War

Could this be a flagpole from the Battle of Monteperti?

The Battle of Monteperti is something I've been hearing a lot about lately. Fought just 8 miles from here on September 4, 1260, it involved factions of the Florentine Guelfs and Sienese Ghibbelines. I am not going to go into a lot of detail on these guys as, especially by Dante's time, it is a tangled mess of alliances and rivalries. The condensed version is that a lot of political maneuvering was done all over Europe around power brokers among the Holy Roman Emperors and the ever-more ambitious popes. Suffice it to say that Dante was a Guelf and as such had a dog in the fight even though it precedes his birth by 5 years.

This afternoon we visited the magnificent Duomo or Cathedral of Siena. Naturally, the first thing that caught my eye was this humble looking, though VERY tall, pair of wooden poles propped up against the inside pillars. Bill Stephany relates that he asked a guard about them one day and was told that they were either a) the mast from the ships at the Battle of Lepanto (Cervantes was in that one!), or b) the flagpoles from the Battle of Monteperti. Sounds a bit far fetched that people in either case would have these long skinny poles dragging about but it turns out that the Monteperti theory actually holds some water.

In any case, Canto 32 has a really great moment with Florentine Bocca degli Abati, a famous traitor in the battle. Dante (the pilgrim AND the poet in his writing) literally attacks Bocca. There is never any doubt about the severity with which Dante treats those who betray kin, community and country.