“Would you like to see his head?”: The battlefield and the bishop from 13th century Italy
By Kelly DeVries
There are two adventures associated with this story, and they are separated by more than 725 years. The first, although only for narrative purposes and not chronological, is less important, but sets the context for the second, much more important late thirteenth-century one.
It first begins in the summer of 2016, when Dr. Niccolò Capponi, Florentine count, and superb (and prolific) historian, and I were writing a book on the 1289 Battle of Campaldino, fought between Ghibellines (mostly lords and their retinues in the Arentini countryside and the militia from Arezzo) and the Guelphs (militias mostly from Florence, with smaller contingents from Siena, Pisa, and other nearby towns). More about this battle will be discussed below, but to keep interest spiked: the great Florentine poet, Dante Alighieri, fought in his city’s militia cavalry in the battle and it affected him significantly.