[HN Gopher] Dante's descendant seeks to overturn poet's 1302 cor... ___________________________________________________________________ Dante's descendant seeks to overturn poet's 1302 corruption conviction Author : blegh Score : 47 points Date : 2021-02-02 20:24 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com) | cosmodisk wrote: | Is that in case he's still stuck somewhere in the purgatory with | potential last minute changes to his itinerary? | spoonjim wrote: | Can a government today even issue a pardon for crimes alleged by | a government of 1302? It's not even the same institution. | dash2 wrote: | Are you sure? Italy has a lot of historical continuity. If you | go to Rome, the manhole covers read SPQR (Senatus Populusque | Romanus). IIRC the government of Florence still works from the | buildings of the Uffizi. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | There are manhole covers in Copenhagen that make reference to | H.C. Andersen but he didn't actually have anything to do with | them, it was more in the form of a thing to make tourists | feel they were somewhere cool. | | I might accept some continuity from now back to the time of | Garibaldi for Italy as a whole (but then we have to write | some notable periods off as aberrations) - As for Florence I | would accept going back to Napoleonic times but from there | the continuity of government was surely broken. | labster wrote: | I was disappointed to learn the title of pontifex maximus | wasn't continuous from the Roman era. I mean, if we need an | intercalary month, I can't think of anyone better than Pope | Francis to decide that. | mongol wrote: | What is an intercalary month and why might we need one? | Grustaf wrote: | The church is continuous from the Roman era though. Both in | the East and the West. | 29athrowaway wrote: | It is a different government since the start of a government is | marked by the adoption of its constitution. | bpodgursky wrote: | Symbolically, sure. Not like it makes any practical difference. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _Symbolically, sure. Not like it makes any practical | difference._ | | It's a risky precedent. Pardoning and convicting dead people | makes for great political theatre. You can get your side | riled up and energized over something with zero practical | effect. It's easy politicking. That creates a perverse | incentive for leaders to focus on the distracting and useless | over the difficult but important. | delecti wrote: | Is this necessary? This article from 2008 seems to indicate that | his sentence had been rescinded. | | https://web.archive.org/web/20111230060902/http://www.telegr... | | Also, it looks like he was convicted under the Holy Roman Empire, | which doesn't really exist anymore. I'm not sure who there is to | overturn his conviction. | orblivion wrote: | I mean they did this: | https://apnews.com/article/9b6f6f5ba5be2408ff0502c7fb8abd5b | | Seems silly. Should they overturn Jesus' conviction too? At a | certain point the conviction is part of their story. | barrucadu wrote: | What's the point in pardoning dead people? | leetcrew wrote: | even if it's only the for the satisfaction of a few people who | care, why not? it's not expensive to pardon dead people, and it | has few practical consequences. | PicassoCTs wrote: | Its easier to fight past injustice then current injustice.. | edmundsauto wrote: | To correct the record, and to serve the general idea that | justice can get it right, eventually. Impact wise, it probably | makes the family feel better. | mongol wrote: | Time to call Pontius Pilatus descendants to correct a | historical mistake. | Ekaros wrote: | I wonder if this were to applied to more modern cases by some | governments, would then the later governments apply new | conviction or overturn the overturn... And how many times | this chain could happen? | | Unless, the case is so recent that it had some effect in | modern day. I wouldn't go touch the old stuff. It is way too | risky in long run... | zabzonk wrote: | Lots of people seemed to appreciate Alan Turing (and lots of | other people) being pardoned for something that should never | have been a crime in the first place. Basically, it's a very | concrete sign of how we want our society to be now. | DanBC wrote: | Also, pardoning Turing makes it easier to get pardons for | people who had similar convictions but who are still alive. | | Pardon for Turing - 2013: | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25495315 | | Turing's law, pardon for thousands of gay men - 2016: | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37711518 | eznzt wrote: | i.e. rewriting history. | zabzonk wrote: | history is the multiple re-writings of our understanding | actual events, in as much as we can understand them | tzs wrote: | How is saying that some past act was wrong "rewriting | history"? | | Rewriting history would be saying that the past act never | happened. | ChrisClark wrote: | Nope. It's just a symbol of hope, that humanity can | improve. | eznzt wrote: | Humanity improves by improving forward, not by changing | the meaning of historical events. | dmix wrote: | The article mentions Galileo: | | > "They were political trials and the penalties of exile and | death inflicted on Dante, my dear ancestor, are unjust and have | never been cancelled as happened with Galileo Galilei," | | But his heresy 'case' wasn't ever officially overturned by the | Catholic Church. Various modern Pope's just said some nice things | about him, but didn't go as far as over ruling the heresey | charge. Assuming that was possible. | | The pope had his talks canceled at La Sapienza University over | this as recently as January 2008 . | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair#Modern_Catholic... | gumby wrote: | Seriously, why bother? | | There are historical wrongs that continue to affect people today, | but in this case that's been damped out by time. | sigzero wrote: | Because it matters to his descendants? | SubiculumCode wrote: | But do they really have standing? | gumby wrote: | After 600 years I would hope it's below these peoples' noise | floor. | | Then again I'm more interested in my reputation regarding | things I have done rather than things someone else did. | frostburg wrote: | You would think so, but probably no. I'm not someone that | directly cares about the many inter-Tuscan historical | grievances, but when I leave the Florence area for, say, | the nearby province of Pistoia I feel more in foreign land | than in London or Berlin. | WalterBright wrote: | 1302 to today, that's 36 generations. 2 to the 36th means his | descendants today have 1 / 70,000,000,000 of his genetic | contribution. | | I'd say they don't have legal standing. | ouid wrote: | You're forgetting to double count for "incest". | evanb wrote: | This was flagged, but I think mistakenly by people who think | you're joking or taking a dig. The point is there weren't | 70,000,000,000 people alive in Italy back then (or, you know, | anywhere ever), so it is very likely that Dante shows up in | multiple branches of this person's ancestry. | belorn wrote: | I am not sure that is a correct definition of incest, as it | more commonly refer to breeding between family members or | close relatives, with the definition of close being up to | the legal system in place. Just two people with a common | ancestry would be a too board definition to be useful. | | But it is correct that 1 / 70,000,000,000 is the wrong | numbers of the genetic contribution. In order to find the | correct number one would have to determine the coefficient | of relationship of the average couple. It is going to a | much smaller number, but at the same time far from actually | incest. | | That said, incest law in Italy is a bit weird. It is legal, | except if it causes a scandal. | Grustaf wrote: | They have 100% of his name. That is more important than biology | to a lot of people. | cgsullivan wrote: | A direct paternal-line descendent of Dante, which Sperello | Alighieri might very well be, would essentially share a copy of | Dante's Y-DNA, which is about 2% of the human genome. This is | comparable to something between 2nd cousin (3.13%) and 3rd | cousin (1.5%). | clcuc wrote: | Would you care to elaborate? You're talking about the Y of | the XY chromosomes? | albertgoeswoof wrote: | If Dante's son had a son who had a son x 36, the Y | chromosome would not have changed much | mdeck_ wrote: | Dante has no living paternal-line descendants. The reason for | the unusual (for Italy) double last name Serego Alighieri was | to preserve the Alighieri name despite there being only | female descendants left at the time (in the 1500s). Source: | https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alighieri#Storia_familiare | (in Italian) | cjohansson wrote: | This is like cleaning up the git history of a project | pacbard wrote: | I guess that they could ask for a new trial but wouldn't it | better if they would settle it using poetry, specifically comic | poetry (or vituperium) that was common during Dante's time? It | would be great if the two heirs would face off on tv on a poetry | battle where they take turns to roast each other families in both | Latin and Old Tuscan. I would watch that. | gumby wrote: | Could be a 1980s style rap battle, which is the most modern | equivalent. | adamc wrote: | I confess to not understanding why people bother doing things | like this. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-02 23:00 UTC)