The original Essex man

The boil and hiss of mediaeval Hell, as conceived by Dante, is hard for us to imagine. Yet the 1935 Hollywood melodrama, The Div- ine Comedy, contains a ten-minute reconstruction of Dante’s inferno inspired by Gustav Doré’s God-fearing illustrations. Spencer Tracey starred reluctantly in the film; the damned are wedged against each other in a stinking hell-pit. Mediaeval Florence, Dante’s birthplace, was riven by pestilience and famine, and indeed Dante had no equal as a singer of otherworldly horror. According to Frances Stonor Saunders, 14th-century Italy was a ‘bloody muck-heap of superstition and brutality’.

Sir John Hawkwood, the mediaeval mercenary, died in Florence in 1394. A taciturn Englishman, he made Italy his adored home and was paid handsomely (by the Florentine government) for his military services. He led Florence into battle against the city’s declared enemies of Siena and Perugia, and fought with a customary mediaeval brutality. (He is said to have inspired the Italian proverb, ‘An Englishman Italianised is a devil incarnate’.)