Vanni Fucci

Vanni Fucci di Pistoia was a 13th-century Italian and a minor character in Inferno, the first part of Dante Alighieri's epic poem the Divine Comedy, appearing in Cantos XXIV & XXV.

In that bolgia, his punishment was to be stung by a serpent, reduced to ashes, and then restored to his former shape for more torturing.

He replied that he stole a treasure from the Church of St. James in his hometown; he had wrongly accused an innocent man, Vanni della Nona, with the crime, for which della Nona was executed.

He then predicts the overthrow of the Florentine Whites to spite Dante and then insults God by making obscene gestures at him, and is attacked by numerous nearby serpents and by the monster Cacus, who was put in the bolgia for stealing Hercules's cattle.

The name is used again in Simmons' 1992 novel The Hollow Man, in which Vanni Fucci is portrayed as a small-time mafioso and thief, whose backstory includes the theft of a chalice from his hometown church, for which his sole regret is that he was unable to fence it.