Le prince revenant : la vie après la mort d’Alphonse II d’Este

Abstract

Around 1600, that is soon after the devolution of Ferrara to the State of the Church, a “shadow” on horseback killed a pontifical soldier who garrisoned the walls of the city at night. The rider was immediately identified as the last Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso II d’Este, who died in October 1597. This essay provides an overview of the contexts of this mysterious incident. Firstly there is the political context, the subjects’ nostalgia for their lost lord – and the manipulation of this nostalgia by the new lords. Nevertheless some deeper anthropological levels must be taken into account. According to a widespread cultural pattern, the guilt of the living called back the discontented dead: in concrete terms, the guilt for the duke’s burial without honour. Similar episodes were recorded at that time elsewhere in northern Italy; they are interpreted as late and distorted manifestations of the medieval Germanic myth of the Wild Hunt.

Keywords

• Alfonso II d’Este
• devolution of Ferrara
• revenant
• wild hunt
• uncanny
• guilt