Cunizza da Romano
[1] Cunizza, Alberico, and Ezzelino III were born into an era of medieval Italy that had organized a system for the distribution of wealth among family members, united by blood or marriage.
Upon Ezzelino III’s acquisition of his inheritance, he sought the opportunity to facilitate his own military and political influence, often by forming and severing elite marriages which were in his best interest.
[1] Along the timeline of Cunizza’s various marriages and love affairs, many of her unions were exploited by Ezzelino III in order to further his political agenda and sow discord among his rivaling factions.
Much modern scholarship on medieval marriages during this time have accounted for Ezzelino III’s apparent lack of regard for marital traditions, only seeing the unions and separations as political tools for his expansion of power.
[4] After devoting much of her time and money to the rally against her brother, Cunizza eventually returned to live with him after losing Bonio di Treviso and facing disgrace.
[1] Cunizza’s act to “secure the salvation of the souls"[7] of her family did not include any slaves who sided against Alberico, rather the document explicitly mentions their eventual damnation into hell.
She left an inter vivo gift to her cousin, Count Alessandro degli Alberti da Mangona, a Tuscan who later appeared in the frozen circle for the betrayers of kin in Canto XXXII of Dante’s Inferno.
She dwells in the heaven of Venus, while her brother Ezzelino III resides in the blood river Phlegethon, in the seventh circle of Inferno among the violent.
She acknowledges that her dwelling in Paradiso may come as a scandalous surprise to the mortals on Earth,[11] since medieval Christianity scholarship didn’t portray heaven as a space which accepts erotic love or those who experienced it.
She prophesizes that Cangrande I della Scala, Dante's leading patron, will assume control of Treviso as absolute autocrat, after its current ruler, Rizzardo da Camino, is killed.
[14] A fictionalized account of the courtship between Riccardo and Cunizza, one with quite a different outcome, forms the basis for Giuseppe Verdi's first opera, Oberto conte di San Bonifacio.
