Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti

Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti was a historical Florentine aristocrat (active c. mid-13th century) who, in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, appears as a soul punished among the heretics in the sixth circle of Hell. Dante locates him in a fiery tomb reserved for those judged heretical (notably Epicureans who denied the soul's immortality), and uses Cavalcante's postmortem appearance to dramatize doctrinal consequences and familial anguish. This placement is a poetic-theological judgment within the Inferno (Inferno, Canto X) rather than an assertion about historical fate.

In Dante's Inferno (Canto X) Cavalcante is portrayed as imprisoned within one of the heretics' tombs, lifting only his head above the edge of the sepulcher; commentators contrast this limited posture with the more towering emergence of Farinata degli Uberti from a neighboring tomb. He is thus represented as a confined, partially visible presence among the fiery arks of the sixth circle.

Within the narrative of the Inferno Cavalcante exhibits the capacities typical of Dantean damned souls: he can speak briefly to the pilgrim-poet, manifesting parental concern by asking after his son Guido, and displays partial, constrained awareness from inside his tomb. Scholarly commentary notes debate about the precise degree of his awareness of present events, but no supernatural powers beyond speech and limited perception are attributed in the sources.