Conrad Malaspina the Younger

The first documents attributed to him date back to 1234 and are about his wedding, which took place two years before to a woman named Urica, the biological daughter of Marianus II of Torres, a judge from Sardinia.

In 1278, on the initiative of the uncle Moroello, the Malaspina occupied the town of Chiavari causing a war with Genoa to which Conrad only participated marginally, to the point that he was absent for the peace oath, being in his overseas lands of Sardinia.

He starts with a captatio benevolentiae, wishing that Dante will have the strength to reach the Empyrean, using a "literary and graceful language" that shows the "moral and material decorum" of the character.

[3] He then presents himself by stating his name and surname, a rare happening in the Divine Comedy and immediately completes the identification by including his parentage to another well-known member of the family.

Fui chiamato Currado Malaspina; non son l'antico, ma di lui discesi; a' miei portai l'amor che qui raffina".

"So may the lantern leading thee above, find in thy will the wax that is required for one to reach the enamelled green on high;" he thus began, "if thou of Val di Magra, or of its neighboring land, dost know true news, tell it to me, who once was mighty there.

[5] Conrad appears in Boccaccio's Decameron, in the sixth novella of the second day, the one dedicated to stories of people that after a great misfortune are able to turn the tables with the help of luck and end up in a better situation than at the beginning.