The Retrial of Dante: In Conversation with Count Sperello Alighieri and Antoine de Gabrielli
- Alexander (Sami) Kardos-Nyheim
- Jun 22, 2021
- 10 min read
Updated: Mar 29
Count Sperello di Serego Alighieri is an astronomer descended from Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy.
Antoine de Gabrielli is a prominent French businessman descended from Cante dei Gabrielli, the judge who condemned Dante to exile.
Dante Alighieri lived from 1265 to 1321. During his lifetime, he was a pharmacist, a poet, and a politician. His study of medicines nourished an already scientific mind and allowed him to stock pharmacy shelves with his works. (Books were sold in pharmacies at the time). Dante’s work as a poet led to the Divine Comedy, among other masterpieces. The Comedy is regarded as one of the greatest works of Western literature and the most significant in the Italian language. Dante’s time as a politician, however, led to his undoing. He became embroiled in the fractious Guelph–Ghibelline rifts of fourteenth-century Florence. Whilst he was being held by the Pope in Rome on false pretences, Dante’s native Florence was taken by a hostile element within his own faction, the Guelphs. There he was tried in absentia on two politically motivated charges of corruption. Cante dei Gabrielli, the mercenary captain, a master of political manoeuvres and ad hoc judge, found Dante guilty on both charges, sentencing him to exile for life. If Dante were ever to return to Florence, he would be executed. Dante never returned. He died in Ravenna, where his body remains—much to the dismay of successive generations of politicians in Florence. This year is the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. To mark this anniversary, a leading Italian lawyer, Alessandro Traversi, is holding a retrial, revisiting the events of 1302 to reassess the validity of these convictions, both as a matter of law and principle. The most direct descendants of the affronted Dante Alighieri and the judge who condemned him, Cante dei Gabrielli, are Count Sperello Alighieri and Antoine de Gabrielli. They will both be present at this trial. Count Alighieri is today one of Italy’s most celebrated astronomers. de Gabrielli is a prominent French businessman—in an amusing irony, the dei Gabrielli family, generations after exiling Dante to another Italian state, themselves fled Italy altogether and moved to France, modifying their name accordingly.
This retrial raises important points of law and justice and marks a poignant moment in the seven-centuries-long lifetime of a perceived wrong. Count Alighieri and de Gabrielli have more to say.
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CJLPA: What exactly are the nature and purpose of this ‘retrial’? Has it been portrayed accurately by journalists around the world?
Count Sperello Alighieri: This ‘retrial’ is, for me, an amusement. It is not a formal legal process nor an officially sanctioned public inquiry. I do not see it as anything serious, simply an interesting event that will help preserve the memory of Dante. The original trial occurred long ago. Whilst it is true that very few descendants of Dante ever returned to Florence (in fact, I only went there for the first time a few years ago), this is not part of a deliberate attempt to avoid the place—there was simply no occasion for us to visit! The Alighieri family have long stopped feeling the injustice of the 1302 trial.
Traversi, the lawyer who proposed the 2021 retrial, falsely claimed to the international press that I had initiated these proceedings. It was Traversi who initiated them and who invited me to have a role. His untrue claim to the contrary almost led me to resign from my role in the trial. Alarmingly, the British press—in particular, the Times and Guardian—did not question the Traversi press release or the scant accounts of the retrial in Italian media. They did not check with me. This has significantly damaged my impression of the British press, as well as the impression held by intellectual circles within Italy of the British press. The Spanish press had the nous to check—the Spanish!
