Cunizza da Romano is one of Dante's most surprising souls in Heaven. She was the sister of the tyrant Ezzelino da Romano, famous in her lifetime for a series of passionate love affairs — including with the troubadour Sordello, whom Dante placed as a guide in Purgatorio. She makes no apology for her passionate nature; she attributes it cheerfully to the influence of Venus, and says that the people of the March of Treviso will long remember what she was — though she is at peace with it. In Heaven, the soul's history is seen clearly and without the distortions of guilt or pride; it simply is what it was, and God has judged and redeemed it. Cunizza's earthly loves, for all their inconstancy, were genuine loves — the disorder was in the excess, not the capacity for love itself.
Folco of Marseilles is introduced — a 12th-century troubadour of great fame who later became a Cistercian monk and then Bishop of Toulouse, notorious for his role in the Albigensian Crusade. Here, he is identified as a lover like Dido, Phyllis, and Hercules — all overwhelmed by love's fire. He points out Rahab the harlot of Jericho, who hid Joshua's spies and was saved with her household — she is here as the first human soul received into Heaven after the Harrowing, the highest among the souls of Venus. And then Folco turns to the papacy with white-hot anger: Florence, that flower on the Arno, produces the poisonous flower (the florin, the gold coin) that has led both shepherd and flock astray. The cardinals think of nothing but the Decretals; the Gospels and Church Fathers gather dust. The Vatican runs red with blood of the holy men whose sacrifice paved it. Peter and Paul are not pleased.