The Darker Side > Human Monsters

the Cannibal Count

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Loki:
Centuries after Dante condemned him to nibble a skull for eternity in the Inferno, Ugolino della Gherardesca, the 'Cannibal Count,' is finally resting in peace.


He was interred in the family tomb, this time with honors, in a solemn ceremony in Pisa's St. Francesco church presided over by local authorities, his descendants and two groups in historical costume.



Ugolino was found guilty of treason in the late 1280s. Left to die from hunger and imprisoned in a tower with two sons and two grandchildren, legend has it he staved off the inevitable by eating his offspring. He became one of the most haunting images in Dante's Inferno, a macabre figure who wipes his lips with the hair of the skull he's munching.


In 2002, the professor of 'excellent cadavers,' Francesco Mallegni discovered a box of bones in a crypt of the family chapel in Pisa and used samples from Gherardesca descendants to prove the remains belonged to the count.
DNA testing showed that Ugolino didn't have much to bite the kin he spent his last days locked up in a tower with. The count, at an estimated 80 years of age, was nearly toothless.


Ugolino is one of the more spectacular discoveries made recently by Italian scholars and scientists who are busy digging up remains to find out more about historical figures. In November, 14th-century poet Francesco Petrarch was exhumed by a team of scientists eager to reconstruct his face and know more about his general state of health.


Anthropologist Mallegni, whose other discoveries include Giotto and verifying the corpse of Saint Ranieri, patron of Pisa, is already working on a new mystery surrounding bones found in a church in Aulla thought to be remains of St. Caprasio.

MyBurningSoul666:
thats great information


~*~KaT :twisted:

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