Aretines’ Corner

Io vidi già cavalier muover campo,
   ............. corridor vidi per la terra vostra,
o aretini ......

(Inferno XXII.1, 4-5)

I once saw knights begin their march,
   ............. I saw war horses on your land,
o Aretines ......

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This little monument (with its broken column representative of death) is set upon a small fenced-in area that actually belongs to the city of Arezzo. No one knows for sure how this oddity came about, but it has been hypothesized that this little plot, just off what used to be the main road between Florence and the Casentino, was used by the victorious Guelphs as a mass burial site for Aretine prisoners who had succumbed to their injuries during the army’s return to Florence from the Battle of Campaldino.

The inscription reads:

“Here on this road, along which the Guelph army of the Florentines marched toward enemy territory with standards unfurled, stands this so-called ‘Aretines’ Corner.’ This patch of land, belonging to the Ghibelline Commune from time immemorial, displays the immortal verses of the poet who was a combatant at Campaldino and bears witness to the memory of the mournful hatred that, once ubiquitous from town to town, has today been eradicated forever within the unified Italian state. Commissioned by Florence with fraternal affection on granite from Roman Arezzo.” Except for that last sentence, the inscription was penned by Isidoro Del Lungo (1841-1927) who was not only a statesman and politician but also a Dante scholar. Each year on the 11th of June representatives from Florence and Arezzo meet to lay a wreath of flowers here in memory of those who died on that fateful day in 1289.

The Battle of Campaldino was a clash between the Florentine Guelphs and the Aretine Ghibellines in a field you can still visit near the city of Poppi. Inside the Poppi castle you can see a miniature recreation of the battle that was prepared by Federico Canaccini, a medieval historian. Among the other participants that day was Corso Donati (who, as leader of the Guelph mounted allies, was supposed to keep Aretine cavalry from retreating but instead attacked the infantry), Vieri de’ Cerchi, the poet Cecco Angiolieri and, of course, our poet. According to Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444), Dante was one of the feditori (lightly armed knights selected by their peers to attack in the second line, after the shieldsmen) and, though beset by great fear, fought in the thick of it. By the end of the contest, the city of Arezzo saw 1700 soldiers dead and over 2000 more taken away as prisoners, including Bonconte da Montefeltro (Purgatorio 5) who, as Dante imagined, took his last breath a few miles from the battlefield where the Archiano river meets the Arno (below).