Farinata degli Uberti

Manente degli Uberti, called Farinata, led the Florentine Ghibellines to the victory at Montaperti in 1260 and then talked his own allies out of destroying Florence, which is why Dante put him in hell and admired him there. He was head of the Uberti, the greatest of the Ghibelline families of Florence, and was driven out of the city when the Guelfs took power in 1258. He went to Siena, Florence's commercial rival and the Ghibelline stronghold of Tuscany, and with German cavalry sent by Manfred of Sicily he brought the exiles back at the head of a Sienese army. They met the Florentine militia at Montaperti on 4 September 1260. The battle was decided by treachery inside the Florentine ranks - a rider named Bocca degli Abati cut off the hand of the standard-bearer, the standard fell, and the militia broke around it. The Arbia ran red, in the phrase Dante took from the chroniclers, and the Guelf dead were counted in thousands. At the council of the victors at Empoli afterwards, the Ghibelline allies proposed to raze Florence to the ground. Farinata said alone that he had fought to return to his city, not to erase it, and that he would defend it against them if it came to that. The proposal was dropped. He died in 1264 and the Guelfs came back the year after, demolished the Uberti houses, and in 1283 condemned him and his wife posthumously as heretics. Dante meets him in the sixth circle among the Epicureans, rising from a burning tomb with an expression of contempt for the whole of it, and asks him about Montaperti.

• Lived: 1212 CE – 1264 CE
• Nationality: Italian
• Roles: noble, military_leader