The story is concerned with the life of Cecco d'Ascoli, who lived between the end of the ‘200s and the beginning of the following century. A man of science, teacher of medicine at the Bologna University, he was forced to stop teaching in 1325 after he held lectures on the ‘commento alla Sfera del Sacrobosco'. Accused of heresy by the Inquisition, he was condemned to death in 1327.