1321: Kleptomania

Andrea del Castagno - Portrait of Dante Alighieri (c.1450)

In Some Observations Made in Travelling Through France, Italy, &c. in the Years 1720, 1721 and 1722, Edward Wright relates being told in Florence about one of Dante’s bad habits:

This great man, we are told, had a most unhappy itch of pilfering; not for lucre (for it was generally of mere trifles), but it was what he could not help; so that the friends whose houses he frequented, would put in his way rags of cloth, bits of glass, and the like, to save things of more value (for he could not go away without something); and of such as these, at his death, a whole roomfull was found filled.

Image: Andrea del Castagno: Portrait of Dante Alighieri (c.1450)

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