Ugo, natural son of Niccolo III. of Ferrara. His father had for his second wife Parisi´na Malatesta, between whom and Ugo a criminal attachment arose. When Niccolo was informed thereof, he had both brought to open trial, and both were condemned to suffer death by the common headsman.--Frizzi, History of Ferrara.
Ugoli´no, count of Gheradesca, a leader of the Guelphi in Pisa. He was raised to the highest honors, but the Archbishop Ruggie´ri incited the Pisans against him, his castle was attacked, two of his grandsons fell in the assault, and the count himself, with his two sons and two surviving grandsons, were imprisoned in the tower of the Gualandi, on the Piazza of the Anziani. Being locked in, the dungeon key was flung into the Arno, and all food was withheld from them. On the fourth day his son, Gaddo, died, and by the sixth day little Anselm, with the two grandchildren, “fell one by one.” Last of all the count died also (1288), and the dungeon was ever after called “The Tower of Famine.”
Dantê has introduced this story in his Inferno, and represents Ugolino as devouring most voraciously the head of Ruggieri, while frozen in the lake of ice.
Chaucer, in his Canterbury Tales, makes the monk briefly tell this sad story, and calls the count “Hugeline of Pise.”
Oh, thou Pisa, shame!... What if fame
Reported that thy castles were betrayed
By Ugolino, yet no right hadst thou
To stretch his children on the rack ...
Their tender years ... uncapable of guilt.
Dantê, Hell, xxxiii. (1300).