Canto Twenty Eight: Bertran de Born

Canto 28 is the only canto in which Dante uses the term contrapasso in the ‘Inferno’. In the final line of this canto, the sinner who is experiencing such a punishment states his awareness of this irony. The sinner in question is Bertran de Born, a noble who plotted with Prince Richard and his brothers against their father, King Henry II. Born describes how in life he ‘severed persons thus conjoined’[1] when he broke the bonds between a father and his sons, therefore his punishment in Hell is to carry his own head ‘severed … from its starting point here in my body’[2]. This physical representation of his act is arguably the clearest example of punishment reflecting sin in the ‘Inferno’ as there is little subtlety surrounding the link between the two.

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[1] Dante, “The Inferno”, Anchor Books, Trans. Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander, Canto 28, Line 139

[2] Dante, “The Inferno”, Anchor Books, Trans. Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander, Canto 28, Lines 140-141