Dante Alighieri (Florence 1265, Ravenna 1321) refers to Maremma on several occasions, describing it as intricate, wild, and difficult to traverse or govern in his masterpiece, “The Divine Comedy”. Our land is portrayed as a victim of the corruption and political decay of Italian noble families. Its ancient rulers, the Aldobrandeschi counts of Santa Fiora, have fallen into decline, crushed by the power of the young city-state of Siena.
Medieval Maremma was an inhospitable area, filled with impenetrable thickets and unhealthy, noxious swamps. When Dante describes the wood of suicides—the infernal circle where those who committed violence against themselves are punished by being transformed into “gnarled and tangled trees”—the immediate comparison is with the lucus of Maremma, situated at its extreme borders, Cecina and Corneto:
“nor are such harsh and dense thickets found / in those savage wilds that hate the cultivated lands / between Cecina and Corneto.”
The marshes and stagnant waters symbolically link malaria and Maremma, represented by its horrific inhabitants: the snakes infesting the pit of thieves, so numerous that Dante emphatically claims: “I do not think Maremma has so many as these.”
The sorrowful reputation of Maremma as a sinister and impervious place is further evoked in Inferno XXIX, where Dante describes the horrors of the tenth bolgia, claiming that such a spectacle of suffering would not be seen even if: “the plagues of Maremma and Sardinia / were all gathered together in one ditch.”
“When the game of dice breaks up,
the loser stays behind in sorrow,
repeating the throws, and sadly learns;
with the winner goes all the crowd;
some walk in front, some grasp his hand,
and some, from the side, remind him of themselves.”
(Purgatorio, Canto VI)
A passage from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, found in the Sixth Canto of Purgatorio, refers to the Aldobrandeschi family and their connection to Mount Amiata. The passage mentions the game of zara, an ancient dice gambling game that was very popular during the Middle Ages.
According to local legends, the village of Castell’Azzara, near Mount Amiata, was founded by the Aldobrandeschi of Santa Fiora in the 13th century. The story tells of three Aldobrandeschi brothers—Bonifacio, Ildebrando, and Guglielmo—each of whom wanted to build a grand castle in the area. Unable to decide who deserved the honour, they gambled for it using zara. The winner, Bonifacio, built his castle with three towers, one for each brother. Tradition holds that the impressive structure gave rise to the Amiata village of Castell’Azzara.