An Evil Steadfastly Pursued
Count Ugolino’s Motive for Cannibalism in Dante’s Inferno
by Philip Peckson
When Dante plunges into the dark, he grasps the very bottom. When he reaches up, he goes beyond the stars. Other poets are equally broad in their oeuvres, but only Dante achieves this breadth in a single episode of 94 lines—the penultimate canto of Inferno, XXXIII, in which Dante and Virgil come upon Count Ugolino della Gherardesca eating Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini.
When the loathsome cannibal speaks to Dante, we expect that this grisly scene will rise no higher than the pathos other damned souls have so skillfully evoked. But the scene displays not just the worst of humanity but also our apotheosis in Christ, and it does this not allegorically but dramatically. The hateful Ugolino, whose teeth tear eternally at the flesh of his enemy, could have been an alter Christus and, in fact, came close to it. The canto contains all we can become. No poet is as catholic as Dante.
The Question of Cannibalism
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Philip Peckson s an assistant professor at the University of Asia and the Pacific in Manila, the Philippines, where he has taught the Divine Comedy in English translation for more than ten years.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on literature from the online archives
30.2—March/April 2017
on Reading Don Quixote in Its Original Christian Context by Luis Cortest
32.2—March/April 2019
Misguided Mercy & Dante's Infernal Purgation by Joshua Hren
more from the online archives
21.6—July/August 2008
Benedict XVI on the Crisis of Faith & Reason by Samuel Gregg
24.5—Sept/Oct 2011
A Critical Memoir of Thomas Merton at Gethsemani Abbey by Patrick Henry Reardon
24.2—March/April 2011
Certain Death & the Last Lectures of Socrates & Jesus by Randall B. Smith
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
