Visio Karoli Grossi
The Visio Karoli Crassi or Visio Karoli Grossi (meaning "Vision of Charles the Fat"), also called the Visio Karoli (Tertii) Imperatoris ("Vision of [Emperor] Charles III"), is an anonymous work of Latin prose from around 900. It was composed at Reims and depicts a vision of his ancestors warning the Emperor Charles the Fat of the coming downfall of his family, the Carolingians. The work was produced in or near Reims, possibly by someone in the circle of Fulk the Venerable, the Archbishop of Reims, because the "Visio" credits the intercession of Saints Peter and Remigius (the  patron saint of Reims) with preserving the Carolingian line. Fulk was also a Carolingian partisan in 888. Among the works that probably influenced the vision of Charles the Fat prominence can be given to the "De visione Bernoldi presbyteri" written by Hincmar of Reims in the middle of the ninth century. Among the ancestors who appear to Charles in his vision are his father, Louis the German; uncle, Lothair I; and cousin, Louis the Younger. He is also visited by Louis the Younger's daughter, Ermengard, and her husband, Boso, and son, Louis of Provence. Charles had recognised the right  of the latter to inherit Provence after Boso died on 11 January 887, but Charles himself was deposed in November and died in January 888, leaving the young Louis and his mother without a defender. The "Visio" appears to have been written as a defence of the young Louis's claim. The "Visio" was widely transcribed in the ninth through fifteenth centuries, especially in the High Middle Ages (11th–13th). Versions were inserted into the "Gesta Regum Anglorum" of William of Malmesbury, the "Chronicon Centulense" of Hariulf of Oudenbourg, and the anonymous "Annals of Saint Neots" as pieces of historical information . From Wiliam and Hariulf the story was extracted and placed in the universal "Chronicon" of Helinand of Froidmont under the year 888 and in the "Speculum historiale" of Vincent of Beauvais. A complete English translation of the "Visio" was included in "The Birth of Purgatory" by Jacques Le Goff as evidence of the need, as early as the ninth century, for a realm lying between Hell and Paradies (i.e. Purgatory) wherein good men could reside in the hereafter. The "Visio" may also have been an inspiration to Dante Alighieri. In his "Divine Comedy" ("Inferno", XII, 100–126), in the first ring  of the seventh circle of Hell, Dante, guided by Virgil and Nessus, visits those sinners, "tiranni / che dier nel sangue e ne l' aver di piglio" ("tyrants / who dealt in bloodshed and in pillaging"), who are immersed to varying depths in boiling water. This punishment was not typically ascribed in Dante's age to such sinners, but the "Visio" attaches it to those who "facere praelia et homicidia et rapinas pro cupiditate terrena" ("make battle and murder and rapine because of worldly cupidity"). Theodore Silverstein, who first identified the connexion between Dante and the "Visio", suggests that Dante's apparent  interest in contemporary politics would have attracted him to a piece like the "Visio". Its popularity assures that Dante would have had access to it.