Lucca

Lucca is a Tuscan city-state that appears in the Divine Comedy as a place of origin for several souls Dante encounters in the afterlife, most notably in Purgatory, where it is associated with the sin of gluttony and with a prophecy of future redemption through a virtuous woman. The city also figures in the Inferno as the home of a corrupt public official whose punishment exemplifies the barratry of Lucca's ruling class.

Lucca in Purgatory: Buonagiunta and the Prophecy of Gentucca

In the sixth terrace of Purgatory, where the gluttonous are purified, Dante meets Buonagiunta da Lucca, a poet of the earlier Tuscan school. Buonagiunta is so emaciated by the purgatorial hunger that his face is more peaked than the others, and he is identified by Forese Donati, who points him out among the shades. When Dante speaks with him, Buonagiunta murmurs a name—Gentucca—which Dante hears from the place where the wound of justice afflicts him. Buonagiunta then explains that a maiden is born, not yet wearing the veil, who will make Lucca pleasant to Dante, however much men may blame it. This prophecy, which Dante is to carry with him on his way, promises that a future virtuous woman from Lucca will transform the poet's perception of the city. Buonagiunta also recognizes Dante as the poet of the "sweet new style," the "dolce stil novo," and acknowledges that the knot which held him, the Notary, and Guittone d'Arezzo short of that style has been loosed by Dante's verse, which follows closely after Love as he dictates.

Lucca in Hell: The Elder of Santa Zita and the Barrators

In the fifth Bolgia of Malebolge, where barrators are punished by being submerged in boiling pitch, a black devil arrives carrying a sinner slung over his shoulders. The devil announces that he brings "one of the elders of Santa Zita" and commands the Malebranche to plunge him beneath the pitch, declaring that he will return for others to that town, which is well furnished with them. He adds that all there are barrators except Bonturo Dati, and that "No into Yes for money there is changed." This elder is a Luccan magistrate, and his punishment—being seized by demons and thrust into the boiling pitch—reflects the corruption of Lucca's civic administration, where public office was bought and sold. The city's reputation for barratry is thus made explicit in the infernal landscape.

Narrative Significance

Lucca serves in the Comedy as a counterpoint to Florence: it is a city whose corruption is acknowledged but whose future redemption is promised through a single virtuous woman, Gentucca. In Purgatory, Buonagiunta's prophecy offers Dante a reason to hope for Lucca, while in Hell, the elder of Santa Zita embodies the systemic barratry that Dante condemns. The city thus functions as a microcosm of the moral condition of Italian city-states, where individual virtue can redeem a collective reputation, but where corruption is punished with the same divine justice that governs all of Hell.