Are your ancestors in Hell? As I've been looking into my supposed Colombian gateway ancestor and his likely forbear King Carlos III of Navarra, whose 600th anniversary of his death is coming up on September 8, it dawned on me that some of his "noble" ancestors could have been name-dropped in Dante's Inferno.
Dante Alighieri was a great poet and delightfully petty man, who truly had the last laugh when he wrote that he spied many of his political enemies among the flames of Hell. Seven centuries later, Dante's side of the story is often the only account that has survived. Take that, Black Guelphs and Ghibellines!
Sure enough, Wikipedia has a list of cultural references in Dante's Divine Comedy, and a number of King Carlos III's ancestors roam this medieval afterlife. In particular, in Canto XX of Purgatorio, Dante disses Carlos's entire patrilineal line, the French Capetian dynasty. Charles of Valois, a Capetian prince, invaded Florence and brought about Dante's exile, so Dante doesn't hold back when he meets the first Capetian king, Hugh Capet (c.941-996), among the pitiful shades in Purgatory's fifth terrace of Avarice. (All quotes come from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation.)
Hugh Capet, the 11th-great-grandfather of Carlos III, says "I was the son of a Parisian butcher" (Purgatorio XX:49), and this incorrect fact has been repeated by centuries of writers. Hugh laments: "I was the root of that malignant plant / Which overshadows all the Christian world, / So that good fruit is seldom gathered from it..." (XX:43-45). Tell us how you really feel, Dante, about these "Louises and Philips, / By whom in later days has France been governed" (XX:50-51)!
Hugh goes on to list the misdeeds of three descendants named Charles. First, King Charles I of Sicily (c.1226-1285), 4th-great-grandfather of Carlos III, is said to have killed the Duke of Swabia and St. Thomas Aquinas(!): "Charles came to Italy, and for amends / A victim made of Conradin, and then / Thrust Thomas back to heaven, for amends" (XX:67-69). In reality, St. Thomas Aquinas fell deathly ill after hitting his head on a tree branch.
Next, Charles of Valois (1270-1325), great-great-grandfather of Carlos III and the invader of Florence, is said to have used "the lance / That Judas jousted with; and that he thrusts / So that he makes the paunch of Florence burst. / He thence not land, but sin and infamy, / Shall gain" (XX:73-77).
Lastly, King Charles II "the Lame" of Sicily (1254-1309), 3rd-great-grandfather of Carlos III, is criticized for being captured in a naval battle and greedily negotiating the marriage of his 10-year-old daughter, Beatrice, to Azzo VIII d'Este, the lord of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. "The other, now gone forth, ta'en in his ship, / See I his daughter sell, and chaffer for her / As corsairs do with other female slaves." (XX:79-81).
Bringing up the rear is Dante's worst Capet, King Philip IV "the Fair" of France (1268-1314), great-great-grandfather of Carlos III, who had Pope Boniface VIII held hostage and destroyed the order of the Knights Templar. Dante says of the pontiff: "Christ in his own Vicar captive made. / I see him yet another time derided." (XX:87-90), and about Philip persecuting the Knights Templar: "I see the modern Pilate so relentless, / This does not sate him, but without decretal / He to the temple bears his sordid sails!" (XX:91-93).
Earlier in Purgatorio, before Dante and Virgil climb the terraces of Purgatory, they spent the night in the "Valley of the Princes," a realm of sensory overload where worldly rulers who neglected their spiritual well-being are waiting for their turn to enter Purgatory, singing "Salve Regina" in union. This valley is a gaudy replica of nature, remade in rich but clashing colors: "Gold and fine silver, and scarlet and pearl-white, / The Indian wood resplendent and serene, / Fresh emerald the moment it is broken, / By herbage and by flowers within that hollow / Planted" (Purgatorio VII:73-77). A myriad of flowers fills the valley with an overload of scents, reminiscent of a Yankee Candle outlet: "the sweetness of a thousand odours / Made there a mingled fragrance and unknown." (VII:80-81). Too much of a good thing can be awful.
Salvador Dalí's 1964 engraving of Virgil peering at the humbled monarchs waiting in the Valley of the Princes. (source)
Dante and Virgil see multiple relatives of King Carlos III among the trapped spirits:
Rudolf I (1218-1291), first German king of the Habsburg dynasty and 3rd-great-grandfather of Carlos III, is grumpily silent: "He who sits highest, and the semblance bears / Of having what he should have done neglected, / And to the others' song moves not his lips." (VII:91-93).
Ottokar II (1233-1278), king of Bohemia and another 3rd-great-grandfather of Carlos III, is dressed in swaddling clothes and gives Rudolf a look that "doth comfort him" (VII:97). Dante says Ottokar is "Far better... than bearded Winceslaus / His son, who feeds in luxury and ease." (VII:101-102). That implies that Wenceslaus II (1271-1305), king of Bohemia and great-great-grandfather of Carlos III, probably ended up in Hell.
Next comes another crappy Capetian. King Philip III "the Bold" of France (1245-1285), great-great-grandfather of Carlos III, who is shown as pug-nosed, repentant, and disgraced for dying of dysentery while fighting in Spain: "And the small-nosed, who close in council seems / With him that has an aspect so benign, / Died fleeing and disflowering the lily; Look there, how he is beating at his breast!" (VII:103-106).
King Enrique I "the Fat" of Navarra (c.1244-1274), 3rd-great-grandfather of Carlos III, is very depressed: "Behold the other one, who for his cheek / Sighing has made of his own palm a bed" (VII:107-108).
These two are saddened by the evilness of King Philip IV, Philip's son and Enrique's son-in-law: "Father and father-in-law of France's Pest / Are they, and know his vicious life and lewd, / And hence proceeds the grief that so doth pierce them." (VII:109-111).
Gustave Doré's etching of the Valley of the Princes.
Dante directly mentions a few relatives of Carlos III who are tormented in Hell. In Canto X of Inferno, Dante and Virgil enter the Sixth Circle of Hell, where heretics stay inside flaming tombs. A Florentine named Farinata pops up from the tomb for Epicureans and says that Frederick II (1194-1250), a Holy Roman Emperor who was a religious skeptic and 1st cousin six times removed of Carlos III, is also sweltering inside (Inferno X:119).
Later in Canto XII, Dante and Virgil enter the first ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell and behold a river of boiling blood, filled with violent tyrants. They are condemned to stay submerged in the river and are shot down by arrows fired by centaurs if they try to escape.
One of the centaurs named Nessus points out Guy de Montfort (1244-1291), 1st cousin five times removed of Carlos III: "A shade he showed us on one side alone, / Saying: 'He cleft asunder in God's bosom / The heart that still upon the Thames is honoured.'" (XII:118-120). This refers to when Guy de Monfort killed his cousin, Henry of Almain, during mass in an Italian church in 1271. Guy avenged his father, who was killed in battle by an army led by Henry's father. (Click the above link for details.) Henry is said to have clutched the altar, begging for mercy, to which Guy replied: "You had no mercy for my father and brothers."
The deepest part of the river "behoveth tyranny to groan" (XII:132), and is "goading / That Attila, who was a scourge on earth" (XII:133-134). Attila the Hun (c.406-453) was the supposed forbear of Hungary's Árpád dynasty, and an Árpád princess, Mary of Hungary (c.1257-1323), married the aforementioned King Charles II of Naples and was the 3rd-great-grandmother of Carlos III.
Philippe Velt's fresco of Dante meeting Piccarda in Paradiso's Sphere of the Moon.
At least one relative made it to Paradiso. Queen Costanza I of Sicily (1154-1198), 1st cousin eight times removed of Carlos III, was only allowed in the lowest sphere of Heaven, the Sphere of the Moon, because she allegedly abandoned her monastic vows to marry. That is not historically accurate, but Costanza married at what was then the unusually late age of 31 to a husband who was only 20 years old, so later writers invented all sorts of backstories.
In Canto III of Paradiso, Dante meets his friend's dead sister Piccarda, another woman forced to leave the convent, and she says of Costanza: "A nun was she, and likewise from her head / Was ta'en the shadow of the sacred wimple. / But when she too was to the world returned / Against her wishes and against good usage, / Of the heart's veil she never was divested." (Paradiso III:113-117).
It's interesting to note that this supposedly good Costanza became the mother of wicked Frederick II. Maybe Frederick's religious skepticism makes more sense given that detail, or maybe the Epicureans will eventually need to scooch over to make room for me.
Questions? Comments? Please email me at ruedafingerhut (at) gmail.com.
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