In Thomas Harris' Hannibal (1999), the eponymous serial killer relocates to Florence. Having disposed of the librarian of the “fabled Capponi library,” Lecter, posing as one “Dr Fell,” proceeds to give a lecture on Dante and Judas Iscariot to the Studiolo, “the most renowned medieval and Renaissance scholars in the world” (Harris, 2000: 934), in order to secure his nomination for the now-vacated position. Lecter proceeds to give a slide show involving death by hanging of avaricious betrayers, of which Judas is the archetype and the policeman who pursues Lecter/Fell, Commendatore Pazzi, is the modern analogue. Pazzi is also a member of the audience for the lecture. Lecter/Fell proceeds to read (literally, in a flawless Tuscan “without accent”) Canto XIII of Dante's Inferno, which narrates Dante and Virgil's encounter with the seventh circle of Hell, the violent. Dante comes across a wood in the Second Round, filled with trees full of “poisonous thorns” (Dante, 1961: 167). Dante hears voices but presumes they come from people hidden behind the trees; but when he reaches out his hand to unthinkingly pluck “a twig from a great thorn” (Dante, 1961: 169), the tree trunk itself cries out: “ ‘Why dost thou tear me?’”: “from the broken splinter came forth words and blood together” (Dante, 1961: 169). These are men turned into trees, men that had committed violence against themselves. This is the circle of Hell for the suicides.