User:Kwinkler23/Gualdrada

Biography

Gualdrada dei Ravingnani was born around 1168 in Florence, Italy. Her father, Bellincion Berti, was the powerful Ghibelline head of the Ravingnani family. Around 1180 she became the second wife of Count Guido Guerra, an important general of the Guelph party (the rival political party to her father's). This marriage was politically advantageous for Florence, as it stopped the ongoing hostile relationship between the Conti Guido family and the city. She continued to work as a mediator between the Conti Guido family and Florence with records showing her acting as a head of her family to free a monastery owned by the Guido's from an armed Florentine threat. The four of her sons that lived into adulthood established the four branches in which the Conti Guido family split. Gualdrada lived longer than her husband and died in 1226 in Poppi castle which was owned by one of her sons.

Gualdrada as a Symbol

Gualdrada's status as a famous Florentine and symbol of virtue was cemented in an episode of Giovanni Villani's Nuova Cronica. This story however has been contested, as its said to take place in 1209, a time where there is evidence of her sons already being adults. Despite this, Gualdrada's legacy as a symbol of virtue is heavily intwined in this story created by Villani. She is one of four women of her time to be written about in Giovanni Boccaccio's On Famous Women (De mulieribus claris). Boccaccio calls upon Villani's episode in his biography of Gualdrada.

During a festival in a Florentine cathedral the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV spotted Gualdrada from his seat and was impressed with her beauty. He admired her innocence in youth, the way she dressed, and her personality. He asked who she was to the man beside him, describing her as having a "beautiful face that... surpasses all the others in dignity". The emperor did not know that the man he was asking coincidentally was her father, Bellincion Berti. He responded to the emperor stating that if he wished he could get her to kiss him. Gualdrada overheard this and bravely objected, stating that "no living man would ever kiss her except her husband" solidifying her character as one of womanly virtue and purity. The Emperor so impressed with her response suggested that she marry Count Guido and the two were said to have married in 1209.

Although this specific event most likely did not happen, Gualdrada was still married to Count Guido and was still a Florentine figure worthy of admiration for her mediation between the Conti Guido Family and Florence.

Appearance in Dante

Dante mentions Gualdrada in his Divine Comedy. Her name appears in line 37 of Inferno XVI when he meets a Florentine man in the section of hell reserved for the sodomites. He describes this man to be the "grandson of the good Gualdrada" giving him the honor of coming from an admirable family and using Gualdrada's image of a virtuous and good woman to do so. Dante himself was a Florentine Guelph so Gualdrada's marriage to Guido Guerra (a Guelph man) ending hostilities between them and the city of Florence is an action which would be understandably admirable to him. This is especially likely since the time of Inferno's writing he had been exiled from Florence for his political alignment as a White Guelph. Dante's respect for Gualdrada extends beyond her to her family as well. Her father, Bellincion Berti, is mentioned in Paradiso XV lines 112-113 and in XVI line 99 as a model citizen and a symbol of the virtue of old Florence.