Alberta Piroci Branciaroli
Dante Alighieri (Florence 1265 - Ravenna 1321), poet whose 700th anniversary of his death is celebrated in 2021, had a close relationship with the Casentino valley. He took part in the battle of Campaldino at the age of twenty-four and in the years ranging from the first sentence of January 1302 to the death of Emperor Henry VII in the year 1313, he was permanently present, even if not continuously, at the Guidi counts who lived in their castles in Porciano, Romena, Poppi, just to name a few of the best known.
The documents indicate Dante as spokesman and ambassador of the Count of Romena, Alessandro Guidi, captain of the League of the exiled Whites of Tuscany; of the thirteen letters of the great poet that remain to us, a good part are written from this valley and five of them bear date and place. From the castle of Poppi he will write to the Empress Margaret of Brabant, wife of Emperor Henry VII, on behalf of Countess Gherardesca.
In the three canticles of the Divine Comedy there are many references, descriptions, the characters of the Casentino that Dante evokes: Mastro Adamo, Count Ugolino, father of Gherardesca, Bonconte da Montefeltro fallen in Campaldino, San Romualdo founder of the Hermitage and the monastery of Camaldoli , Saint Francis who on the mountain of La Verna received the "last seal" (stigmata) and precisely for this extraordinary event Francis was defined as the Alter Christus and La Verna, the second Calvary and the holiest mountain in the world (Non est in toto sanctior orbe mons) as well as says an inscription placed at the ancient entrance to the sanctuary.
Our journey begins from the sources of the Arno, a river that crosses the entire Casentino valley and that Dante remembers in the 14th canto of the Purgatory: And I: «Through half of Tuscany there is a river that originates in Falterona, and a hundred miles of course no satiated. I have this person on top of it: tell you that I am, it may be that I speak in vain, because my name still does not sound very much ". "If your understanding is right with your understanding", then the one who said before replied, "you are talking about the Arno". And the other said he: "Why did he hide the vocabulary of that coast, even as he does the horrible things?". And the shadow that was asked for this, repaid himself thus: "I don't know; but it is worthy that the name of this valley is; because from its beginning, where the alpine mountain is so steep, where Peloro is truncated, that in a few places passes beyond that sign, there is still there for refreshment of what the sky of the sea dries, so rivers have what goes with them, so vertu escapes from all enemies as a snake, or because of the misfortune of the place, or because of bad use that searches them: hence their nature has changed so they inhabit the miserable valley, that it seems that Circe had them in pasture "(Pg. XIV- vv.16-42)
Mount Falterona is also mentioned by Dante in the Convivio (IV-IX-8): "And in each of these three ways we see that iniquity that I say, because more times to the wicked than to the good the hidden riches that are found or who retract themselves represent themselves; and this is so evident, that it has no profession of proof. I actually saw the place, on the coasts of a mountain called Falterona, in Tuscany, where the most vile villain of the whole district, hoeing, found more than one bushel of very fine silver santalene, which perhaps more they've been waiting for it for several years ”. Mount Falterona is the second highest peak in the Tuscan-Romagna Apennines, after the nearby Mount Falco; it is located in the heart of the Casentinesi Forests and is part of the National Park of the Casentinesi Forests, Monte Falterona.
On the southern slope which is part of the municipal territory of Pratovecchio Stia, at an altitude of 1,358 meters, there is a spring (called Capo d'Arno), considered the origin of the river of the same name as well as the largest Tuscan watercourse.
The second stop on our itinerary is at the castle of Porciano, owned by the Counts Guidi, owners of many other castles in Tuscany and Romagna, since the 11th century (1017). The castle is located in the Municipality of Pratovecchio-Stia and the large tower which is still visible today, was built during the 13th century, in conjunction with the affirmation of the branch of the Counts Guidi di Porciano - Modigliana of which it became one of the major headquarters of representation.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, during the political and cultural apogee of the castle of Porciano, Dante was here a guest of the Counts Guidi during his exile from Florence and wrote there, between 1310 and 1311, the three famous letters "Ai Princes and Peoples of Italy ”,“ Ai Fiorentini ”,“ Ad Arrigo VII ”. The Counts Guidi left Porciano in 1442, when the last count, Ludovico, became a monk in Florence. Later the castle passed first to the Republic of Florence and then to the Municipality of Stia. The first and second epistle of 1304 bears witness to the centrality of Romena, a place that can be reached by following the course of the Arno, and crossing it in Pratovecchio: the first written by Alighieri in the name of Alessandro da Romena captain of the White Part of all of Tuscany, to Cardinal Niccolò da Prato who had received the office of apostolic legate from Benedict XI in 1303; the second written to Oberto and Guido di Romena after the death of their uncle Alessandro.
Famous is the episode of the XXX canto of Hell in which the poet tells the story of the forger Mastro Adamo met in the eighth circle of the tenth bedlam, with a swollen belly, burnt with thirst and in the grip of hatred that manifests powerless against the counts of Romena who instigated him to strike fake florins: "There is Romena, there where I falsified / The sealed league of Batista; / so that I left the body on burnt. / But if I saw here the sad soul / Di Guido or d'Alessandro or their friar, / for Fonte Branda I would not give sight." (Inf. Vv. 73-78)
The journey continues to Borgo alla Collina (Municipality of Castel San Niccolò) where in the church of San Donato it is possible to stop in front of the monumental sarcophagus of Cristoforo Landino made on a design by Antonio Bartolini in 1848. The Landino, author of the Disputationes Camaldulenses and first commentator of the Divine Comedy, he was secretary of the Florentine Republic from which he received the castle of Borgo alla Collina at the end of the fifteenth century, a castle that had belonged to the countess Elisabetta dei Guidi di Battifolle. The central marble medallion of the sarcophagus is dedicated to the great philosopher and humanist, whose family was originally from Pratovecchio, portraying him in a half-length in bas-relief.
And here we are at the Campaldino plain where, at the foot of the Poppi hill, it is possible to admire Dante's column, the monument that was erected in 1921 on the sixth centenary of the death of the great poet. Dante participated in the battle of Campaldino on 11 June 1289, as a wounded man on horseback as shown in a letter reported by Leonardo Bruni, in which he confessed to having "had a lot of fear, and in the end very great joy for the various cases of that battle ". The clash ended in fact with the victory of the Florentines and the death of the Ghibellines Guglielmino degli Ubertini, bishop of Arezzo and of Captain Bonconte da Montefeltro, father of Manentessa, wife of Count Guido Selvatico di Battifolle di Pratovecchio. Bonconte's body was not found and Dante will remember this episode in the fifth canto of Purgatory imagining the end of the brave captain: ”I was from Montefeltro, I am Bonconte; Giovanna or others doesn't care about me; because I go among those with a low forehead ". And I to him: "What force or what fortune led you so far out of Campaldino that your burial was never known?" "Oh!", He replied, "at the foot of the Casentino a water crosses the Archiano, which rises above the Ermo in the Apennines. There 's his vocabulary becomes in vain, I get pierced in his throat, running away on foot and bleeding the floor. There I lost sight and speech; in the name of Mary it ended, and there I fell, and my only flesh remained. I will say true and you will laugh at it among the living: the angel of God took me, and that of hell shouted: "O you of heaven, why do you deprive me? You take the eternal of him for a tear that takes it away from me; but I will make the other government! ". You know well how that humid vapor collects in the air that rests in the water, as soon as it rises where the cold catches it. He came that ill will that although badly asks with the intellect, and moved the smoke and the wind by the virtue that nature gave him. Then the valley, as the day was extinguished, from Pratomagno to the great yoke covered with fog; and the sky above made intent, so that the prey of the air converts into the water; the rain fell, and what the earth did not suffer came to her ditches." (Pg. V - vv. 85-129)
Along the cycle path it is possible to reach the place where the Archiano flows into the Arno and where Dante imagines and describes the last moments of the life of the Ghibelline captain Bonconte, mortally wounded in Campaldino. There, today there is a commemorative poster of the Dante episode that made him famous.
The Casentino Creative Center, the Emma Perodi Literary Park and the Municipality of Bibbiena have completed the project for the enhancement of this place of memory which is the backdrop to the 5th canto of Purgatory. And it is precisely in this fifth canto that Dante evokes the hermitage of Camaldoli founded by Romualdo from Ravenna at the beginning of the 11th century. The monk, founder of the Order of the Camaldolese, is remembered by Dante in the XXII canto of the Paradise: "Here is Maccario, here is Romoaldo / here are my friars who stopped their feet inside the cloisters and kept their hearts firm" (Pd. vv. 46-51)
The memory of the Casentino landscape in the Divine Comedy is not limited only to Hell and Purgatory. The suggestion of these places also returns in the third canticle, in Paradiso, where mentioning San Francesco, Dante recalls the raw stone of La Verna: one of the oases of peace immersed in the nature of the National Park of the Casentinesi Forests, a place of great spirituality that knows speak who knows how to speak to the heart of man. It is here, it is in La Verna, that St. Francis received the stigmata, the signs of the passion, of the pain of the man-God: Jesus Christ.
Our journey ends at the sanctuary by referring to the 11th canto of Paradise in which Dante remembers St. Francis who: "in the raw stone between Tevero and Arno / from Christ he took the last seal / that his limbs carried two years". (Pd. Vv. 106-108)
Dante's strong bond with Casentino has not escaped the storytellers of various eras such as Sacchetti and Perodi who in their short stories recalled the great poet, his biographical events and the legends that over time have developed around the wandering, visionary poet who, as Ugo Foscolo said, was able to describe all the human passions, all the actions, the vices and the virtues that he places in the despair of Hell, in the hope of Purgatory and in the bliss of Heaven.
C/O Società Dante Alighieri 
