Cavalcante Cavalcanti

Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti was a Florentine philosopher who flourished around 1250 and died around 1280. He was the father of Guido Cavalcanti, a close friend of Dante Alighieri. Cavalcanti belonged to the wealthy Guelph faction of Florentine aristocrats and was a merchant banker, involved in lending money under usurious conditions with papal consent during the crusades. In 1257, he held the position of Podestà (chief magistrate) in the city of Gubbio. Following the Ghibelline victory at the Battle of Montaperti in 1260, Cavalcanti went into exile in Lucca. He returned in 1266 and arranged for his son Guido to marry the daughter of Farinata degli Uberti, a prominent Ghibelline, as a means of reconciliation between opposing families. Despite his Guelph affiliation, Cavalcanti was accused of heresy, and it is suggested he may have been an atheist, similar to his son. Dante Alighieri references Cavalcanti in the tenth canto of his *Inferno*, depicting him as a doting father in conversation with Dante, yearning for news of his son Guido. Cavalcanti and Farinata degli Uberti are represented as neighbors in the same tomb in Hell. Biographically, Cavalcanti is described as a rationalist and epicurean, who did not believe in the immortality of the soul and posited that reality consisted solely of atoms. Dante meets him in the 10th canto of Inferno, where heretics and Epicureans are placed in fiery tombs. Cavalcante died around 1280.