1293: Capocchio, Inferno-bound
Add comment August 15th, 2018 Headsman
On this date in 1293, the heretic and alchemist Capocchio was burned at the stake in Siena.
Little is known about about this man’s life, but thanks to his contemporary Dante we know a great deal about his afterlife. Capocchio appears among the “Falsifiers” or “Imposters” haunting the eighth circle of hell in Cantos XXIX and XXX of the Inferno.
We meet Capocchio butting into a conversation Dante is having with a different (also executed) shade — Capocchio crying out to support their mutual disdain for the “flighty” Sienese.
“But should you want to know who seconds you
Against the Sienese, direct your eyes to me
So that my face can give you a clear answer:
“See, I am the shade of Capocchio
Who falsified base metals through alchemy
And, if I read you rightly, you recall
“How fine an ape of nature I have been.”
This remark implies that Dante might have known Capocchio in life. Dante had a vivid destiny in mind for his maybe-acquaintance a few passages later, when
two shadows I saw, stripped and pallid,
Biting and running in the selfsame way
A hog behaves when let out of the sty.
One came straight at Capocchio and sank
His tusks into his scruff and, dragging him,
Scraped his stomach against the stony floor.
And the one left behind, the Aretine,
Shivering said, “That ghoul is Gianni Schicchi,
And he goes rabid, like that, mauling others.”
The attacker was another notorious imposter, with an artistic legacy of his own in the form of Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi … or both together on canvas via William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
Dante e Virgilio by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1850) has the two named characters contemplating from the background as Gianni Schicchi takes a bite out of Capocchio.
On this day..
- 1905: Thomas Tattersall, taking the hangman with him - 2020
- 1963: Eddie Lee Mays, the last executed in New York - 2019
- 1720: Matthew Tompkins, Daniel Lazenby, and Maurice Fitzgerald - 2017
- 1741: Juan de la Silva, Spanish Negro - 2016
- 1817: Four arsonists in the rain - 2015
- 1714: Constantine Brancoveanu and his sons - 2014
- 1812: William Booth, forger - 2013
- 1941: Josef Jakobs, the last executed in the Tower of London - 2012
- 2010: Two Afghan adulterers stoned - 2011
- 2004: Atefah Rajabi Shalaaleh, schoolgirl - 2010
- 1986: The Stoning of Soraya M - 2009
- 1963: Henry John Burnett, Scotland's last hanging - 2008
Entry Filed under: 13th Century,Arts and Literature,Burned,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Counterfeiting,Death Penalty,Execution,Heresy,Italy,Pelf,Public Executions
Tags: 1290s, 1293, art, august 15, capocchio, dante, dante alighieri, gianni schicchi, inferno, literature, siena, william-adolphe bouguereau
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