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Ghinotto di Tacco, called Ghino, was an outlaw and a popular hero in thirteenth century Italy. He was born in the latter half of the thirteenth century in La Fratta, which is now part of Sinalunga in the Province of Siena. Born the son of a Ghibelline nobleman Tacco di Ugolino and brother of Turino, he was a scion of the Cacciaconti Monacheschi Tolomei family.
Along with his father and brother, he made a career of robbery and plunder while being hunted by the Sienese Republic. After they were caught, his father was executed in Siena’s Piazza del Campo, while Ghino managed to escape and sought refuge in Radicofani, a fortified city on the Via Cassia on the border between the Sienese Republic and the Papal States. There Ghino continued his career as a bandit, but in the manner of a gentleman, always leaving his victims with something to live on. Boccaccio depicts him as a good brigand (Brigante buono) in the Decameron, when relating his kidnapping of the Abbot of Cluny, in the second story of the tenth day:
Ghino di Tacco piglia l'abate di Clignì e medicalo del male dello stomaco e poi il lascia quale, tornato in corte di Roma, lui riconcilia con Bonifazio papa e fallo friere dello Spedale.
Translation: Ghino di Tacco seizes the Abbot of Cluny, cures him of his stomach ailment and then releases him; the abbot, having returned to the Roman court, reconciles Ghino with Pope Boniface and makes him prior of the Hospital.[1]
Dante, in Canto VI, lines 13–14, of his Purgatorio points to Ghino’s ferocity when he refers to the death of the Aretine Benincasa da Latrina (jurist in Bologna, then judge of the Sienese Podestà):
Quiv'era l'Aretin che da le braccia
fiere di Ghin di Tacco ebbe la morte.
Translation: Here was the Aretine who met his death at the fierce hands of Ghin di Tacco.
- ^ Knights Hospitallers Wikipedia article