Cacciaguida degli Elisei (c. 1098 – c. 1148) was an Italian

crusade The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were i ...

r, the great-great-grandfather of Dante Alighieri. Little is known about his life. He was born in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

, and two documents from 1189 and 1201 mention his existence. The 1189 document lists his sons as Preitenetto and Alighiero, the latter being Dante's great-grandfather, and the source of his surname. All other details of his biography are those from his most famous descendant's works. Dante recounts that Cacciaguida joined the

Second Crusade The Second Crusade (1145–1149) was the second major crusade launched from Europe. The Second Crusade was started in response to the fall of the County of Edessa in 1144 to the forces of Zengi. The county had been founded during the First Cru ...

and was there knighted by Emperor Conrad III before dying in the Holy Land. Dante meets Cacciaguida in '' Paradiso'', precisely in the ''canti'' XV-XVII. Cacciaguida is the only ancestor of Dante he encounters (although Alighiero is mentioned as remaining in the first level of

Purgatory Purgatory (, borrowed into English via Anglo-Norman and Old French) is, according to the belief of some Christian denominations (mostly Catholic), an intermediate state after physical death for expiatory purification. The process of purgator ...

), and the elder serves as a father figure to the poet, and a parallel to

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

Aeneas In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas (, ; from ) was a Trojan hero, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite (equivalent to the Roman Venus). His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy (both being grandsons o ...

meeting with his own father

Anchises Anchises (; grc-gre, Ἀγχίσης, Ankhísēs) was a member of the royal family of Troy in Greek and Roman legend. He was said to have been the son of King Capys of Dardania and Themiste, daughter of Ilus, who was son of Tros. He is most famo ...

. As Dante addressed him: Paradiso Canto XVI, 16-21 (Longfellow trans.). Apart from their literary value, the ''canti'' are important for the information they provide about Florence in the 12th century. In the ''canto'' XVII, Cacciaguida forecasts Dante's future, namely his exile from Florence and the solitude of his late years.

References

1090s births 1140s deaths Year of birth uncertain Year of death uncertain People from the Province of Florence Italian soldiers Christians of the Crusades 12th-century Italian people {{Italy-mil-bio-stub