Historical Background

Part III: Dante the Politician

Last updated 05/31/2022.

Part 2 | Part 4

In 1300, Florence was more prosperous than it had ever been. The gold florin, minted in Florence, had become the standard currency of international trade. Florentine bankers were managing the finances of the rich and powerful all over Europe, including the pope. Bustling industries in silk and woolen cloth funneled money into the city; about a third of the citizens earned their living in the cloth industries, collectively producing around a hundred thousand pieces of cloth a year. The population was booming: some thirty thousand citizens lived within the walls, and another seventy thousand in the outlying districts. Construction was already underway on a new outer wall, doubling the radius of the old wall, to defend the ever-expanding suburbs; it wouldn’t be completed until 1333. Masons and carpenters were also put to work on churches and monuments and palaces all over the city, including the construction of the Palace of the Priors (called the Palazzo Vecchio today, begun in 1299) and the reconstruction of the cathedral of Santa Reparata (which would eventually become the famous Duomo, begun in 1296). Nearly ten thousand children were learning to read, a thousand were studying mathematics, and around six hundred were studying Latin and philosophy (Dante had studied all three). Florentine art and culture were undergoing developments that would become the seed of the Renaissance: Giotto with his innovative paintings, Guido Cavalcanti with his philosophical love lyrics, and of course Dante, whose greatest work was yet to come. (The circle of Florentine artists was small, and they all knew each other; Giotto painted Dante, and Dante wrote about Giotto and his master Cimabue in Purgatory 11.)

So Dante’s Florence was a dynamo of human creation and creativity—but always on the brink of ripping at the seams between factions and families. Despite its prosperity (probably because of its prosperity) the city was rife with corruption. Florentine merchants would bribe lords and cardinals alike to do their bidding; no one seemed to be above the power of the florin. In Inferno 21 and 22, Dante finds the barrators—those who engage in political corruption—immersed in a pit of sticky tar, ministered by demons who use their pitchforks to push the damned back into the tarpits if they try to escape. It’s a perfect metaphor of political corruption. The pervasive graft and bribery converted all of Florence into such a tarpit; so that even someone like Dante, who didn’t dabble in corruption, nonetheless found himself knee deep in the muck of a thoroughly corrupt municipal system.

Dante the middle-aged poet, the author of the Comedy, the outcast, the wanderer, himself a victim of political corruption and libel, was all too aware of the insidious dangers of such a system. But Dante the young politician, the lyric poet and lover, the man of Florence, head of his household and a leader in his political party—that Dante still had hope in his government, love for his party, and faith that his voice and vote could put a dent in the problems of his community. And yet, in time, the one would become the other.

• Poetry, Politics and Popes (1293-1298)

• The Dark Forest (1300)

• Black and White (1300-1301)

• The Burden of That Art (1301-1302)

In the years after he wrote the Vita Nuova (1293-1295), Dante was writing two very different sorts of poems. On the one hand, he wrote a number of allegorical canzoni in which he treats philosophical concepts and moral virtues, perhaps in light of his newfound love of philosophy; three of these canzoni would later form the basis for three books of the Convivio, and others were likely destined for later, unfinished books of the same treatise. Though written in the vernacular, these canzoni were ornate and eloquent poems, consciously written in the high tragic style of Virgil and other Latin poets.

On the other hand, our poet exchanged foul-mouthed tenzoni with his friend Forese Donati. The tenzone (“duel”) is essentially the medieval Italian equivalent of a rap battle: Dante writes a sonnet making fun of Forese for being in debt and unable to satisfy his wife, and Forese responds with a sonnet calling Dante’s father a usurer; Dante writes a sonnet mocking Forese as a glutton and a thief, and Forese turns it around with a sonnet ridiculing Dante for being poor; then Dante writes a sonnet calling Forese an illegitimate son of thieving parents, and Forese retorts with a sonnet ridiculing Dante for being a coward who failed to stand up for his father who had been insulted. It is easy to see the influence of the tenzone in certain parts of the Inferno, such as the vulgar exchange of insults between Master Adam and Sinon in Canto 30.

Dante’s friend Guido Cavalcanti, perhaps alluding to this exchange with Forese, wrote a sonnet expressing his disapproval of Dante’s recent verses. Dante himself seems to lament the tenzoni when he meets Forese, who died in July 1296, in Purgatory 23: “If you recall to mind,” he says to Forese, “that which you were with me, and I with you, / the present memory will be heavy still” (Purgatory 23.115-117). In contrast to the ribbing tone of the tenzoni, their exchange in Purgatory is wholly heartfelt.

Forese was a distant cousin of Dante’s wife Gemma Donati. His father, Simone Donati, was the one who hired Gianni Schicchi to impersonate Buoso Donati and falsify his will (Inferno 30.32-45). His brother was the impetuous Corso Donati, who distinguished himself in the Battle of Campaldino; Forese predicts his damnation in Purgatory 24. Their sister Piccarda is the first soul Dante meets in Paradise; she had been a nun until Corso forced her to leave her convent and enter a marriage to benefit himself.

In March 1294, Florence was visited by Charles Martel, the young heir to the Kingdom of Naples (Apulia) and son of Charles II of Anjou (who had lent his cavalry to aid the Florentines in the Battle of Campaldino five years earlier). The Florentines welcomed him warmly. As part of the welcoming ceremony, one of Dante’s canzoni was set to music and sung for Charles Martel, who seemed to admire the poet’s work with enthusiasm; the canzone, which would later appear in Convivio 2, begins, “Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete” (“You whose understanding moves the third heaven”). Charles Martel stayed in Florence for several weeks, and befriended Dante while he was there. He died in the following year, just before his twenty-fourth birthday. In Paradise 8, Dante speaks to him again in the Heaven of Venus—the third heaven.

Brunetto Latini, Dante’s mentor, likewise died within a year of Charles Martel’s visit to Florence (the exact date of Brunetto’s death is unknown). One wonders what role, if any, he might have played in it all. As a prominent Florentine politician, might he have helped Dante secure a part in the welcoming ceremony for Charles Martel? Did his influence allow Dante’s access to the young prince, or was that solely on the strength of Dante’s canzone? And with his special concern for proper rhetoric and the betterment of society, did Brunetto (or his death) help guide Dante’s hand towards the composition of his moral-philosophical canzoni of this period?

What is certain is that Brunetto’s career anticipated Dante’s in a number of interesting ways. He was exiled in absentia in 1260 (after Montaperti), while away from Florence on a diplomatic mission; whereas Dante would be exiled in absentia in 1301, while away from Florence on a diplomatic mission. Brunetto was politically active, even serving as Prior in 1287; whereas Dante, also politically active, would serve as Prior in 1300. Brunetto was married with three or four children; Dante was married with three or four children. Brunetto wrote the Livres dou Tresor (Books of Treasure), a compendium of philosophy written in a vernacular tongue (French), whose title underscores an elaborate metaphor of knowledge; and Dante wrote the Convivio (Banquet), a compendium of philosophy written in a vernacular tongue (Italian), whose title underscores an elaborate metaphor of knowledge. And while in exile, Brunetto wrote an allegorical poem, the Tesoretto (Little Treasure), in the Italian vernacular, in which the poet-protagonist begins lost in a forest, from which he can only escape by going on a journey of moral instruction initiated by a beautiful woman, in the course of which he meets classical figures such as Ovid and Ptolemy; and Dante, of course, wrote the Comedy. We can only speculate about Brunetto’s involvement in Dante’s life as an up-and-coming poet and politician, but the parallels are clearly there.

All the while, the magnates and rich popolani in Florence continued to flaunt the laws of the Priors and to violently oppress the lower popolo. In January and February 1293, the Priors, led by a staunch and principled citizen named Giano della Bella, enacted a new set of laws known as the Ordinances of Justice, aimed at limiting the power of the magnates and penalizing their reckless and violent behavior.

The Ordinances defined the magnate class as any family with at least one knight (seventy-three families in all), and they forbid magnates from holding political offices. They also established strict penalties for infringements: each family was held responsible for its members, and a family’s houses could be destroyed as punishment for certain crimes of the individual. Moreover, the Ordinances made it exceptionally easy to convict: only two testimonies were considered sufficient proof of a crime. Giano della Bella and the Priors also created a new political office called the Standard-bearer of Justice, who bore the insignia of the popolo (a red cross on a white field) and was given charge of a thousand infantry in service of the popolo.

Giano della Bella ensured that the Ordinances of Justice were followed to the letter, having many noble houses destroyed in response to criminal offenses. In this, he earned a good rapport among the popolo, but drew the ire of the nobility. The new laws protected the popolani as intended, but they were overly harsh on the magnates, who complained that they could have their houses razed for the slightest offense. Such penalties did nothing to quell the discord between the upper and lower classes of Florence, but only exacerbated it. When rumors spread among the popolo that the magnates were plotting to kill their leaders, they responded by making the Ordinances even harsher—which only drove another wedge into the divide.

The rumors, as they can be, were grounded in the truth: the magnates had formed a conspiracy against Giano della Bella, who had become the de facto leader of the popolo. “When the shepherd is struck,” they said, “the sheep will scatter.” They rightly feared that Giano’s assassination would only provoke the popolani, so instead they plotted to turn the popolo against him. They found it easy to manipulate a man of such rigid principle. They told Giano about a butcher nicknamed the Sheep, who had been threatening magistrates and breaking laws with a gang of armed men; so Giano immediately moved to make laws against the butchers’ guild. Then they told him how the city’s jurists would extort magistrates with the threat of an audit, and how they’d tie up lawsuits for years to prevent reaching a verdict; so Giano moved to make laws against the jurists. And then the conspirators went to the artisans and the jurists to inform them that Giano was making laws against them—and in this way, they began to turn the popolani against their leader.

Among all of this, the knight Corso Donati (one of the heroes of Campaldino) sent some men to attack one of his cousins, resulting in one death and several injuries. Both sides were charged according to the Ordinances of Justice; and although Corso was to blame, the judge fixed the trial to reflect the opposite. The podestà, Gian di Lucino, acquitted Corso Donati based on the judge’s account, and found his cousin guilty. The popolani were outraged at this injustice, and Corso’s enemies inflamed them. Blaming Gian di Lucino, the popolani set fire to the door of the palace of the podestà. Giano della Bella rode out to quell the riot; but several of the popolani, who had been turned against him, tried to knock him off his horse with lances, and he had to turn back.

When the door had burned through, the popolo stormed inside and ransacked the palace. Some unscrupulous citizens seized the opportunity to destroy legal documents associated with lawsuits against them; others stole property, and even the horses of the podestà were stolen. Gian di Lucino and his wife fled through neighboring houses, hearing the chants of the popolani behind them: “Death to the podestà! To the flames, to the flames!” Someone in one of the houses concealed them until the riot had calmed. The next day, the city of Florence elected to return Gian di Lucino’s belongings and pay him the rest of his salary; upon which he resigned his position and left the city. Many of the leaders blamed Giano della Bella for the insurrection, despite his best efforts to suppress it. His own family advised him to leave the city. On March 5, 1295, as soon as Giano had departed, he was declared an exile and his property condemned. Then the city’s leaders set their sights on his family and his allies, fining or exiling anyone who spoke up in his favor. Dante alludes to Giano (who was still alive, and still an exile, in 1300) in Paradise, saying that though he was born a knight, “he rallies with the popolo today” (16.131-132).

Thus the conspirators against Giano della Bella had achieved their goal: the lower popolo had turned on its staunchest ally. With Giano out of the picture, the magnates were poised to control the city again; but they would soon turn on each other. Such was the state of Florentine politics when Dante began his political career in earnest—his first documented term as an elected official started in April 1295, a month after Giano’s expulsion from the city. The political schism, the corruption, the lies, the deception and manipulation of the people, the drafting of laws for political advantage, the violent uprisings, the storming of a government building—perhaps it all seemed so medieval once upon a time, but it’s all too familiar to us now in the twenty-first century.

In early 1294, the papacy had been vacant for two years, and still the cardinals could not come to a consensus on a new pope. As they continued to deliberate, they received a letter from a Benedictine monk named Pietro Angelerio da Morrone, in which he chastised their indecision and warned them to elect a new pope lest divine vengeance fall upon them. Pietro had lived a solitary and ascetic life, living in caves on remote mountains; at one point, he founded a new monastic order, but quickly gave up the reins to its governance to become a hermit once again. He was almost eighty years old when he sent the disapproving letter to the College of Cardinals. Upon receiving the letter, the cardinals decided to elect Pietro himself as the new pope on July 5, 1294. He reluctantly accepted the honor, and later that month he took the name Celestine V as the new Bishop of Rome.

Celestine was out of place in ecclesiastical life and wholly inadequate for the political aspects of leading the Church. His officials flouted and ignored his decrees, and he longed for his old life of solitude and penitence. One cardinal, Benedetto Caetani, took advantage of Celestine’s insecurities to gain his trust, posing as a dependable confidante and advisor while scheming behind his back to oust him from the papacy and take his place. Just five months into his miserable tenure, the pope confided in Benedetto Caetani that he was thinking of resigning. Cardinal Benedetto encouraged him to do so. On the cardinal’s advice, Celestine issued a decree that formally avowed the pope’s right to abdicate; and a week later, on December 13, 1294, he exercised his self-given right, becoming one of the only popes in history to refuse the papacy (Pope Benedict XVI, who abdicated in 2013, was the first pope to resign in six centuries). On Christmas Eve, Benedetto Caetani was elected Pope Boniface VIII.

The former pope, now Pietro again instead of Celestine, would never return to the monastic life he sought. Boniface feared that his opponents would use Pietro to delegitimize his papacy. Despite Pietro’s attempts to flee, Boniface confined him to a castle southeast of Rome, where he died in captivity ten months later at the age of eighty-one.

For refusing his holy office, Celestine V is pegged as “he / who made the great refusal” by most of the Comedy’s early commentators (Inferno 3.59-60). This shade, unidentified by the poet, is among the lukewarm sinners outside the gates of Hell, who are condemned for refusing to take sides on issues of moral import. As for Boniface VIII, who did not die until 1303 (three years after the Comedy takes place), Dante has one of his predecessors predict his damnation in the Inferno. When the pilgrim meets Pope Nicholas III among the simoniacs in Canto 19, Nicholas mistakes him for Boniface arriving sooner than he thought (Inferno 19.52-57):

He cried: “Are you already standing here,
are you already standing here, Boniface?
The script has lied to me by several years.

Are you so soon sated by the wealth for which
you did not fear to use deceit to take
the lovely lady, and abuse her with?”

The “lovely lady” is the Church, whom Boniface abused to sate his own greed. His underhanded dealings were far from over—his corrupt reach would soon extend to Florence, where he would prove to be the bane of Dante’s life.

Bits and pieces about Dante’s political career in Florence have been preserved in public documents. In March 1295, he was elected to Florence’s Council of the Hundred (Consiglio dei Cento) for the term lasting from April through September. This council, presided over by an official called the Captain of the Popolo, had been established in 1289. Its members were elected every six months by the Priors of the Guilds, and its duty was to approve or reject the Priors’ proposals (approval being secured by a majority vote, as long as at least seventy councilors were present in assembly). Initially, the Council of the Hundred voted on matters involving the commune’s finances; but its purview gradually expanded to include political and legislative matters as well.

On July 6, Dante (or perhaps another Alighieri) spoke in favor of a proposal to modify the Ordinances of Justice. The proposal passed; among the modifications was an ordinance that required almost any elected official to be a member of a guild (thus excluding the old nobility from direct participation in Florentine politics). Dante promptly enrolled in the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries, one of the city’s seven major guilds and also one of the wealthiest. This guild dealt in eastern imports, such as spices and drugs and jewels; but also in books and works of art, which were more likely of interest to Dante. More importantly, his enrollment secured him a continuing role in the city’s politics.

Members of the Council of the Hundred were forbidden to serve consecutive terms. Instead, after his term finished at the end of September, Dante was elected to serve on the Council of the Captain of the Popolo, another position of considerable influence in Florence; it is recorded that on December 14, 1295, he voted in the bi-monthly election of the Priors of the Guilds. The following March, he was again elected to the Council of the Hundred (it is recorded that he spoke before the council on June 6, 1296; this was a month before the death of his friend Forese Donati in July). There’s no surviving record of Dante’s political activity from this point until May 1300; but documentary evidence from the period is scarce, and it is reasonable to surmise that Dante remained an active figure in Florentine politics in the intervening years, whether serving on councils or in some other capacity.

In the same time period, Dante wrote a series of four poems known as the Rime Petrose (Stony Rhymes). The first of these poems (“I have come to the point of the wheel”) opens with a rather complicated astronomical description indicating that the narration takes place in December 1296. These poems express Dante’s love for an unidentified woman (sometimes called Donna Petra, “Lady Stone” or the “Stone Lady”), who does not love him in return. She is characterized as beautiful but cold, a woman of stone who threatens to turn the poet to stone with her icy indifference to him. The poems are filled with images of the green earth frozen over (green being the color of the theological virtue of hope), with violent metaphors of love and even hints of suicide.

No one knows the identity of the Stone Lady, nor even if she was a real woman or only a poetic or allegorical fiction. Certainly Dante gives her human characteristics, such as curly blonde hair. Some critics have suggested she was a woman who was actually named Petra (or variations on it, like Pietra; or Piera, the name of Dante’s sister-in-law)—which is very possible, though it does seem a bit on the nose. Knowing Dante, the Stone Lady could very well be both a real person and an allegory; but if she was real, her identity is uncertain to say the least.

If an allegory, she could represent the Holy Church or the papacy: the name of Saint Peter, who is traditionally viewed as the first pope, derives from the word petra (“stone” or “rock”). Jesus gave Peter (who had been called Simon) his name and the church in the same breath, saying, “Thou art Peter (Petrus), and upon this rock (petram) I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Dante uses a similar allegory in Inferno 19, where all the corrupt popes are planted headfirst in holes in the stone (“pietra”)—the implication being that the corruption of the papacy puts cracks in the very foundation of the church. It doesn’t at all seem a stretch to suppose that Dante had the same allegorical connection in mind when writing the Rime Petrose. Just as with the Stone Lady, his relationship with the church was ambivalent: while he was falling in love with the church as a Christian, the church establishment (particularly Pope Boniface VIII) showed no love for him in return. In fact, Boniface would end up actively opposing Dante and his allies, throwing his support behind their enemies in Florence—though at the time of the Rime Petrose, he was still playing both sides.

The allegory of the Stone Lady becomes even more mysterious when we consider her possible connection to Medusa, the Gorgon who appears in Inferno 9. Like the Stone Lady, Medusa threatens to turn the poet into stone. Virgil warns Dante not to look at her, and when Dante turns away with his hands over his eyes, Virgil places his own hands over Dante’s, as if protecting the pilgrim from his own curiosity. Then the poet writes a tercet that has baffled commentators for seven centuries (Inferno 9.61-63):

O you who have sound intellects, observe
the doctrine hidden here, which is contained
beneath the veil of strange and cryptic verse.

It is exactly at this point that someone descends from Heaven to help Dante and Virgil. It isn’t clear whether Medusa actually shows herself while Dante’s eyes are shut; but she isn’t there when he opens them. What is the “hidden doctrine” to which Dante refers? The poet seems to be pointing to an allegory hidden in the verse that we should be able to see, and the scene with Medusa seems to beg for an allegorical interpretation; but there’s no consensus on what the allegory might be (nor even if the allegory involves Medusa, or the help that arrives, or both). I don’t have an answer here, and I certainly don’t think Medusa and the Stone Lady are one and the same; but it is tantalizing to consider the undeniable connection, that both have the power to turn Dante to stone.

Nobody knows who, if anyone, the Stone Lady might have been. Nobody knows what, if anything, she might represent. But the poet’s tumultuous relationship with her—his awe of her, and the violence and hopelessness in his verse—reveals a turmoil in his heart, even as his life in politics seemed to be coming together. And the same turmoil pulsed in the beating heart of Florence.

With the lower popolo suppressed, perhaps it was a matter of time before the magnates of Florence split into two opposing factions. As with the Guelphs and Ghibellines of the older generations, the political divide began as a feud between rival families. Back in 1280, the Cerchi family bought a palace from the Conti Guidi family in the sesto of Porta San Piero, right next to the houses of the Donati family. The Cerchi were merchants from the wooded countryside around Florence; they were wealthy and extravagant, and showed little concern for the strictures of social class. The Donati, by contrast, were an urban family of old nobility; they were not as wealthy as the Cerchi, but they garnered respect from their ancient lineage and their long history with the city. The Donati family derived their power from the very social hierarchy that the Cerchi disdained. They watched as the Cerchi walled off their palace and built their towers higher; and the more their upstart neighbors put their luxury on display, the more envious the Donati became.

The Cerchi would eventually become champions of the popolo, in this way distancing themselves from the magnate establishment, while gaining an influential foothold in the civic government of Florence. The popolo welcomed their wealthy, powerful new advocates with open arms. And though the Cerchi were Guelphs, they were also on friendly terms with the Ghibelline party of broader Italy, finding a common enemy in the old nobility. The Donati family in turn became champions of the magnate hierarchy, cronying up with the other old noble families of Florence. Their political power had been limited by the popular government, but they wielded considerable influence nonetheless, owing to their military might and their strong ties in the social fabric of the city. They were also favored by Pope Boniface VIII, who was wary of the Ghibellines.

The families, and their corresponding factions, were headed by heroes of the Battle of Campaldino: Vieri de’ Cerchi on the one side, who had ridden in the front lines despite having a crippled leg; and Corso Donati on the other, who had won the field by flanking the Ghibellines. They were allies of circumstance then, fighting for the Guelphs; but now bitter adversaries, fighting for dominance in Florence. Tensions came to a head in 1296 when Corso Donati arranged to marry Tessa degli Ubertini da Gaville, whose family were relatives of the Cerchi. Tessa was the heiress to her late father Ubertino’s fortune; and Corso, who was a widower, stood to gain her inheritance by marrying her. Tessa’s family opposed the marriage because they wanted to keep the fortune in the family; but her mother, who liked Corso, moved forward with the wedding against their will. The Cerchi were indignant on behalf of their relatives. They tried to prevent Corso from getting Tessa’s inheritance, but he took it forcibly. From then on, the enmity between the two families grew in a series of escalating incidents.

Near the end of 1296, members of both families attended the funeral of a noblewoman in the Piazza de’ Frescobaldi. Those who were not knights or doctors were seated on mats on the ground; and at length, someone stood (to stretch or adjust his clothes, or whatever), and his edgy rivals stood in response with their hands on their hilts. Soon, both families were on their feet and brawling—at a woman’s funeral, mind you. When the scuffle was broken up, the Cerchi gathered at their houses and were only barely talked down from going after the Donati in revenge.

In 1298, some of the Cerchi were waiting in the courtyard of the podestà when some pork pudding was brought out to them. Those who ate it fell ill, and a few of them even died. The Cerchi and their allies believed Corso Donati was responsible for the poisoning, but their allegations were never proven. The incident drove the Cerchi to branch off from the main Guelph party and form alliances with the popolo.

Among Corso Donati’s many enemies was Dante’s best friend Guido Cavalcanti. Corso feared his audacity; so when Guido left for a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in Spain, Corso contrived to have him assassinated en route. The assassination was never attempted, but Guido learned of the plot upon his return to Florence. Furious, he stirred up a group of Cerchi youths and rode out to find Corso in the street. When he found him, he spurred his horse to gallop past Corso and tried to hit him with a dart—but it missed its mark. The Cerchi youths failed to back him up, and Guido fled through the streets pursued by Corso and his entourage. They threw stones after Guido, and Corso’s supporters cast stones down from the windows as he rode past; one of them struck and wounded his hand before he escaped. Thereafter, Corso referred to Guido as Cavicchia (“Wooden Pin” or “Peg,” a slur on his surname Cavalcanti); and the jesters in his court would repeat the nickname.

Likewise, he was calling Vieri de’ Cerchi the ass of Porta San Piero: “Has the ass of Porta San Piero been braying today?” he would say. So the Donati tried to bait the Cerchi into another brawl, but the Cerchi didn’t bite. Instead, they strengthened ties with their allies in Pisa and Arezzo, prompting their enemies to accuse them of associating with Ghibellines. Before long, these accusations would be heard by Pope Boniface VIII.

So we come round to April 1300. Dante, like Florence at the time, seemed to be at a peak: he was married with children, influential in politics, and so acclaimed as a poet that bards were singing his lyrics… yet the Comedy opens on Thursday April 7, 1300 (the day before Good Friday), and the poet represents himself, at this exact time in his life, as lost in a dark forest without a guide, his way blocked by beasts and his will shut down by fear. And just like the pilgrim in his poem, the real Dante at the apex of his career was about to discover that the only way out is down.

In the latter half of the thirteenth century, the Christian world gradually lost its footing in the Holy Land. The territories taken during the Crusades were reclaimed by Muslims under the new Mamluk Sultanate, ending with the fall of Acre in 1291. Christian pilgrimages to Jerusalem were effectively put to a halt, as it was no longer safe for Christians to travel to the Holy Land. Partly in response to this, Pope Boniface VIII promised a full pardon to those who would make a pilgrimage to Rome in the year 1300, confess and repent their sins, and visit the Roman basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul for fifteen consecutive days (thirty for those who already lived in Rome). It was called the year of the Jubilee, after the ancient Jewish tradition of the Jubilee celebrated every fifty years, when slaves were freed and debts forgiven (Leviticus 25).

The first Christian Jubilee was a rousing success. An estimated two million pilgrims made their way to Rome in 1300. The Romans went to extraordinary lengths to accommodate the unprecedented crowd. They opened a new gate in the city walls; and as Dante describes in Inferno 18.28-33, they used two-way lanes to direct the constant foot traffic across the River Tiber on the Ponte Sant’Angelo. From his detailed description in Inferno 18 and other allusions elsewhere in the Comedy, it seems likely that Dante made the pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee of 1300. It’s even possible, since there’s no surviving record of his whereabouts before May 7, that he was on the pilgrimage in March and April. In other words, there is a tantalizing possibility that Dante took a trip to Rome for the Jubilee coinciding with his journey in the Comedy.

On the first of May, 1300, Florence held its annual May Day festivities to mark the arrival of spring. There were banquets throughout the city, and performers and dancers in the neighborhood streets. During the celebration, a group of thirty or so young men on horseback—some of them Cerchi, some Adimari, and others of their faction—had paused to watch some ladies perform a dance in the Piazza of Santa Trinita. Another group of young men—Donati, Pazzi, Spini, and others of their faction—having just come from a feast, rode up next to their rivals to watch the dance alongside them. They began baiting and buffeting each other, until a brawl broke out between the two groups of young men. In the scuffle, Piero Spini lopped off the nose of Ricoverino de’ Cerchi.

Just as, generations before, the murder of Buondelmonte had divided the city into factions of Guelph and Ghibelline, so the mutilation of Ricoverino de’ Cerchi sent a rift through the Guelph party. Every man, great and small, clergy and layman, sided with either the Cerchi or the Donati. Many who sided with the Cerchi did so because they were Ghibellines or popolani; or out of loyalty to Giano della Bella, who’d been wronged by the old magnates; or because they were relatives of the Cerchi, or business associates, or debtors; or because, like Guido Cavalcanti, they were enemies of Corso Donati or his relatives. Those who sided with the Donati did so for similar motives: ancient aristocratic families, fundamentalist Guelphs, opponents of Giano della Bella, enemies of the Cerchi, and friends and relatives and business partners of Corso Donati. Thus, once again, the citizens of Florence were divided along personal and political lines.

A week later, Dante went as a Florentine ambassador to San Gimignano, a small town on a hill between Florence and Siena. It is recorded that, on May 8, he spoke on behalf of Florence before the council of San Gimignano, proposing to convoke an assembly of the cities of the Tuscan League (a Guelph alliance) for the purpose of electing a new Captain of the League. He was successful: the council ratified his proposal.

Not long after his return to Florence, Dante was elected as one of the six Priors of the Guilds, the highest political office in the city. The two-month term of his priorate, to which he would trace all his subsequent misfortunes, began on June 15 in the year 1300. It was the highest point of his political career, and the lowest point of his life—the point at which his world turned upside down.

Around this time, Pope Boniface VIII sent one of his cardinals, Matteo di Acquasparta, to Florence with the purported goal of mediating a peace between the Cerchi and Donati factions. But as much as Boniface pretended to be a neutral party, he had a vested interest in supporting the Donati faction: the Donati had the pope’s bankers on their side (the Spini family), as well as the support of fundamentalist Guelphs; whereas the Cerchi had the support of the Ghibellines, the pope’s historical adversaries. Neither faction, as it turned out, would grant Cardinal Matteo the powers of arbitration he required to settle their differences; so Cardinal Matteo left irately, and went to Lucca to stir up trouble against the Cerchi.

On Saint John’s Eve (June 23), the guilds went marching in procession on their way to make their customary offerings to John the Baptist (the patron saint of Florence, for whom the Baptistery of San Giovanni is named). They were intercepted by a group of magnates, who beat them and shouted, “We’re the ones who won the field at Campaldino, but you’ve stripped us of our city’s honors and offices!” In response, the outraged Priors (including Dante) chose to temporarily banish several of the leading men on both sides. Those on the Donati side were sent to Castello della Pieve, about fifty miles east of Florence; those on the Cerchi side were sent to Sarzana, sixty-five miles west of Florence.

The banished leaders of the Donati faction (among them, Corso Donati himself) were reluctant to go, but finally obeyed after threats and cajoling from the senior officials. Had they stayed, they might have taken the city; for Cardinal Matteo (who was now back in Florence) had cut a deal with Lucca to send an army to aid the Donati faction. Hearing of the scheme, the Priors wrote a letter warning the Lucchesi not to proceed, and they had the passes blocked between Florence and Lucca. In response to Cardinal Matteo’s duplicity, someone shot a crossbow bolt at his window and it stuck in the shutter. The cardinal moved to a house across the Arno where he thought he would be safer; and to make amends, the Priors sent him two thousand gold florins in a silver cup. Dino Compagni (the politician and historian from whose book, the Chronicle of Florence, much of this history is taken) personally carried the silver cup of florins to the cardinal, explaining to him that this was the highest sum they could offer without the approval of the Council of the Hundred. According to Compagni, Cardinal Matteo thanked him, and stared at the florins for a long time. But he didn’t take them.

Among the Cerchi leaders banished by Dante and the other Priors was Dante’s best friend Guido Cavalcanti. In Sarzana, Guido got infected with malaria (mosquitoes being more prevalent in coastal Sarzana than Florence). His final poem (“Because I do not hope to ever return”), written in exile, depicts the poet on his deathbed with no hope of returning to Florence. And near the end of August, just two months after his banishment, Guido did die in exile (what a supreme irony it is that, many years later, Dante would also die of malaria in exile). Imagine Dante’s grief: as Prior, he had a direct hand in the death of his best friend and poetic mentor, and the leading poet of the Dolce Stil Novo.

In Inferno 10, after Dante tells Farinata about his ancestry, another shade pops his head up from the tomb from which Farinata has risen. Seeing Dante, the shade looks over his shoulder to see who’s with him, then says (Inferno 10.58-60):

“If you are going through
this blind prison through genius at its height,
where is my son? and why’s he not with you?”

From these words, plus the knowledge that the shade is an Epicurean heretic (that is, he believes the soul dies with the body), Dante immediately realizes who it must be: Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, Guido Cavalcanti’s father. Though Farinata is the more imposing figure and the pilgrim converses with him longer, the scene with Cavalcante is the centerpiece of the canto.

Cavalcante recognizes that Dante’s poetic genius is what has ultimately gained him access to his otherworldly journey. But the poem is set in April 1300. Dante has not yet written the Comedy; he is not yet il Sommo Poeta (“the Supreme Poet”), as Italians call him today. Ask a Florentine in 1300 who their greatest poet is, and their answer would be Guido Cavalcanti. So Cavalcante asks the natural question, “Where is my son? and why’s he not with you?” Dante gives a fumbling and roundabout answer (Inferno 10.61-63):

“I don’t come through here by myself,” said I:
“the one who’s waiting there, through here might lead
to someone—one your Guido had despised.”

Someone is with me, just not Guido. Centuries of commentary has focused on the word “cui” (which could mean “whom” or “to whom” in context; I’ve rendered it as “to someone—one”) on line 63, owing to the ambiguity of the pilgrim’s grammar: does it refer back to Virgil (“the one who’s waiting there”) or to someone to whom Virgil will lead (Beatrice maybe, or God)? If Virgil, does it imply that Guido can’t make this poetic journey because he disdained Virgil and the classical poets? If Beatrice, does it imply that Guido had an issue with Beatrice, or Dante’s relationship with her, and can’t come with Dante because Beatrice inspired the whole journey? If God, does it imply (as some early commentators maintain) that Guido was an atheist, and therefore could never write a Christian epic?

But while the critics quibble over one grammatical ambiguity hinging on a single word, Cavalcante focuses on another (Inferno 10.67-69):

And standing suddenly: “What’s that?” he cried,
“did you say ‘had’? is he not still alive?
does the sweet light no longer strike his eyes?”

Dante’s odd phrasing, “had despised” (“ebbe a disdegno”) rather than “has despised” or “despises,” prompts Cavalcante to question whether his son is alive. For the Epicurean heretic, death is the end; if Guido has died, then for Cavalcante, there is no more for his son. Dante hesitates, and Cavalcante interprets his hesitation as an affirmative answer that his son is dead. He falls back into the tomb, and Farinata picks up where he and Dante had left off.

But in April 1300, Guido was alive and well. That knowledge eats at the pilgrim; but another knowledge is eating at the poet. Two months after the journey of the poem, Dante and the other Priors will send Guido into exile; and two months after that, Guido will die. Though he’s alive at the time of the poem, the ghost of Guido permeates the whole scene. The poet’s grief and guilt are palpable. It is the highest order of dramatic irony.

Near the end of his conversation with Farinata, Dante says, “Now you will tell that fallen one / his son is still among the living” (Inferno 10.110-111). In a strange way, even though Guido was a fiery partisan of the Cerchi faction of Guelphs, his life was marked by attempts (if failed attempts) at reconciliation: as a boy, his marriage to Farinata’s daughter Beatrice was intended to reconcile Guelphs and Ghibellines; and he was among the Guelph leaders who signed the peace pact with the Ghibellines in 1280; and at the end of his life, he was exiled to allay the strife between the Cerchi and Donati factions. Even here in the afterlife, it is Guido, through Dante’s request, that will force the Ghibelline Farinata to talk to the Guelph Cavalcante.

Perhaps it’s appropriate to conclude with a sonnet Dante had written for Guido in Florence, while his friend was still alive. While they were doing their best to write about love, even as factional politics were consuming their lives and ripping their city apart.

Guido, I wish that you, Lapo and I
were taken in by some enchanting spell,
and put into a boat that rides the swells
of sea and wind upon your wish or mine.
So no misfortune or ill-tempered skies
could ever be a hindrance to our sails,
but, living always with a single will
to be together, our desire will rise.

And lady Vanna, lady Lagia too,
and she who’s numbered with the thirty ladies—
the good enchanter puts them in with us;
and we’d be talking on and on of love,
and each of them would be content and happy,
as I believe we would be, me and you.

What truer friends and better lovers we all might be, if only we could sail away from the world.

The banished leaders from both factions had been allowed to return to Florence while Guido was still on his deathbed in Sarzana. The sole exception was Corso Donati, who escaped captivity in Castello della Pieve and went to Rome before the term of his exile was over. For this, the Florentines condemned him to death in absentia, seized his property, and destroyed his houses.

In Rome, Corso met up with Nero Cambi, an agent of the Spini family in the papal court. The Spini were a Florentine banking family of the old nobility—allies of Corso, and the personal financiers of Pope Boniface VIII. When Corso and Nero Cambi told Boniface about the discord in Florence, the pope sent for Vieri de’ Cerchi to come to Rome, ostensibly to make peace with Corso. But Corso and Nero Cambi had put a little worm in the ear of the pope, whispering libel about the Cerchi, blaming them and accusing them of supporting the Ghibellines. So when Boniface implored Vieri de’ Cerchi to settle his differences with Corso, Vieri—a little wary, a little proud, perhaps a little rash—replied that he had no quarrel with anyone. He went back to Florence, and left Boniface fuming in Rome.

The other leaders of the Donati faction wasted little time before plotting their next move against the Cerchi. With the factions now openly hostile to one another, the fearless Donati grew bolder and more violent. The Cerchi, in response, turned to neighboring Pistoia for help.

In the early part of the thirteenth century, a Guelph banker named Cancelliere rose to prominence in the countryside around Pistoia (twenty miles northwest of Florence). He eventually moved into the city, where he expanded his business and established a family. With his first wife Bianca, he had a son named Rinieri; and he had two other sons, Sinibaldo and Amadore, with a second wife. The three sons of Cancelliere became the progenitors of three powerful branches of the Cancellieri family with dozens of descendants. Over the course of the century, the Cancellieri family came to dominate Pistoia through their flourishing international banking business and their hold on the city’s political offices.

But the branches of the family were competitive, nursing what may have begun as a healthy sibling rivalry into a tense tribal feud. The descendants of Rinieri called themselves the Bianchi (Whites) after the mother of their branch of the family, Bianca. In opposition to the Whites, the descendants of Sinibaldo and Amadore (half-brothers of Rinieri) called themselves the Neri (Blacks). Near the end of the thirteenth century, the tension broke into open hostility due to actions of a hotheaded son of the Whites named Vanni de’ Cancellieri; he was nicknamed Focaccia (“Hearth-baked” or “Fired-up,” hence the homonymous bread), perhaps for his tough and hot-tempered personality. Dante names Focaccia among the sinners in Caïna, the sector of the ninth circle reserved for the souls of those who betrayed their own kin (Inferno 32.63); early commentators give widely varying accounts, however, of the crime that condemns him there.

One of the most entertaining stories (though it is probably either apocryphal or misattributed to Focaccia), told by the commentator Benvenuto da Imola, begins innocently enough with a snowball fight. One day in 1300, according to the tale, Focaccia’s father scolded his nephew (Focaccia’s cousin, from the Black Cancellieri branch) for pelting another boy with a snowball; the nephew, still angry at his uncle, punched him a few days later. The boy’s father sent him back to his uncle, with the understanding that Focaccia’s father could punish his nephew as he saw fit; but instead of a punishment, he gave him a kiss and sent him away, laughing the whole thing off. Focaccia, however, caught the boy (his cousin) leaving the house, dragged him into the stable, and cut off his hand. Then he went and found the boy’s father (his uncle) and murdered him. Focaccia’s violent actions led to reprisals, and those led to reprisals, and so on, until all of Pistoia was involved in the feud, with everyone taking sides either with the Whites or the Blacks.

The story speaks to how quickly the cycle of vendetta could escalate a trifling insult to deadly violence. Family members were expected to avenge one another, blood for blood; and once the cycle started, it did not stop. Whether or not there’s any truth to Benvenuto’s account, modern commentators agree on another version of events based on documentary evidence: in 1293, Focaccia (a White Cancellieri) killed his cousin Detto di Sinibaldo (a Black Cancellieri) in an ongoing cycle of vendetta between the Black and White Cancellieri. Detto was very influential in Pistoia, and his assassination kicked off a chain of reprisals that eventually brought all of Pistoia into the Cancellieri feud, siding with either the Blacks or the Whites (note the similarities to Benvenuto’s tale).

In every version of events, the violent schism of the Blacks and Whites in Pistoia traces back to Focaccia’s murder of a kinsman (analogous to the assassination of Buondelmonte, which sparked the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict in Florence; or the mutilation of Ricoverino de’ Cerchi, which exacerbated the factional divide between the Cerchi and the Donati). The Blacks and Whites, which had begun as rival branches of the Cancellieri family, thus became the two dominant political parties of Pistoia.

To quell the factional violence, the leading members of both branches of the Cancellieri family were exiled to Florence (either shortly after 1293, or in 1300). Presumably this included the leader of the White party, a gutless knight named Schiatta Amati, who had ties with the Cerchi family; and the leader of the Black party, Simone da Pantano, a thin and wicked man of will who allied himself with Corso Donati. The exile of the Pistoiese leaders had little effect on the conflict in their city; but it had the unfortunate side effect of bringing it into Florence, where it merged with the ongoing conflict between the Cerchi and the Donati factions. The Cerchi sided with the Whites, and their party became known as the White Guelphs; the Donati sided with the Blacks, and their party became known as the Black Guelphs.

To their credit, the leaders of Pistoia enacted laws attempting to maintain a balance of power between the parties. For instance, the city’s Elders (an office analogous to the Priors in Florence) were to be elected from both factions in equal numbers. In the same vein, the podestà and the Captain of the Popolo of Pistoia were to be appointed by the Florentines, since presumably a foreign leader would be more impartial than a local leader tied to one of the parties. Recall that Corso Donati had been podestà of Pistoia at the time of the Battle of Campaldino; and at one point, Giano della Bella had served there as captain.

But the Florentines, by and large, proved to be poor leaders of Pistoia. Many of them abused their power to squeeze money from the Pistoiesi, and few were truly impartial. Even Giano della Bella, who ruled with characteristic integrity, was also characteristically harsh, setting fire to the houses of those families who violated Pistoiese law. And as the Cerchi and the popolo tightened their grip on the Florentine government in the late 1290s, the leaders they sent to Pistoia tended more and more to favor the White party.

Cantino di Amadore, who served as Captain of the Popolo in Pistoia in the latter half of 1300, went so far as to have all of the Pistoiese Elders elected from among the White party—a direct violation of Pistoiese law. When confronted about this, Cantino deflected responsibility onto the Florentine government, claiming that he had acted on the instruction of the Priors (Dante was serving as Prior during this period, from June to August 1300). According to Dino Compagni, Cantino was not telling the truth; but either way, his actions further divided the White and Black parties in both Pistoia and Florence. Cantino gave the White Guelphs a temporary leg up in Pistoia, but aggravated the conflict that would ultimately drive their party from the city.

In April 1301, Dante was once again elected to a six-month term on the Council of the Hundred in Florence. In the same month, the Florentines knighted a man named Andrea Gherardini and sent him to Pistoia to serve as Captain of the Popolo (also a six-month term). Andrea was led to believe that the Blacks were conspiring with the Lucchesi to forcibly take over Pistoia. So in May, he ordered the exile of many Black Cancellieri and their adherents. When the exiled citizens, led by Simone da Pantano, refused to leave, Andrea Gherardini set fire to their houses and declared them to be rebels. He took many of them into custody, and allegedly tortured them to extract confessions, then extorted them for gold florins in exchange for their freedom. For all of this, he was paid four thousand florins—some say the money came from the Whites in Pistoia, others from the White Guelph government in Florence, as compensation for the enemies he would make in the process. If indeed the Florentine government subsidized Andrea’s coup, Dante, as a member of the Council of the Hundred, would likely have cast a vote on the distribution of funds—for or against, we do not know.

Dante’s vote on another issue, however, is a matter of record. In June, Pope Boniface VIII sent word to Florence requesting military aid in his ongoing disputes with a rival family (the Aldobrandeschi). On June 19, when the Council of the Hundred considered a proposal to send a hundred troops to assist the pope, Dante not only voted against it but urged his fellow councilors to do the same. Though Boniface was still playing both sides in the dispute between the Black and White Guelphs, he had revealed his preference for Corso Donati’s party (the Blacks) when he sent Cardinal Matteo to Florence in the previous year; and Corso, still in Rome, had the pope’s ear. It must have been clear, to Dante at least, that Boniface was not to be trusted. But Dante’s party, who held the majority on the council, was not so bold—the proposal passed 49 to 32, and troops were sent to aid the pope.

In the same month, the Black Guelphs called a meeting in the church of Santa Trinita, where they discussed forcing the Cerchi and their followers into exile. Heeding the advice of the more prudent men among them, they adjourned without taking action; but some of them made vague promises to set things in motion against the Whites. Before they went their separate ways, Dino Compagni, who had attended the meeting as a nonpartisan advisor, warned them against fighting their fellow citizens and ruining the city. “What would you win?” he asked them. “Nothing but grief.” They answered that they only wanted peace and an end to the conflict. So Dino preemptively brought several of them before the Priors and mediated a discussion between them. The Priors were upset upon hearing of the meeting, but with Dino’s mediation they merely reprimanded the Donati conspirators, who in turn assured the Priors that they would not proceed with the plot to exile the Whites.

The Cerchi and their supporters nevertheless wanted the Black Guelphs to be punished under the Ordinances of Justice for conspiring against the government. They were only partially appeased: a handful of the conspirators were exiled for mustering some armed men as a result of the meeting. This punishment did not dissuade the Blacks, but gave them the impetus to proceed with their plan to oust the White Guelphs from Florence.

In Inferno 6, when Dante is speaking to the Florentine glutton Ciacco, he asks him a series of three questions about their native city: what will become of the Florentines?; is anyone in Florence just?; and what caused the discord in Florence? (Notice that the questions concern the future, present, and past.) To the final question, Ciacco answers that pride, envy, and avarice are responsible for the discord. To the second, he answers that there are two just men in Florence, but that they aren’t heeded; he doesn’t name them, which has led commentators to suggest a variety of candidates, including Dante himself, Guido Cavalcanti, and Dino Compagni (because of an ambiguity in Ciacco’s diction, some commentators have even suggested that he doesn’t indicate two just men, but two just things, but we won’t get into that here).

To Dante’s first question, what will befall the Florentines, Ciacco answers with a mysterious prophecy (Inferno 6.64-69):

“After long tension and suspense,
they’ll come to blood, and the woodland party then
will drive the other out with much offense.

But then this party too must fall within
three suns, and so the other will surmount
with the force of one who’s straddling the fence.”

The prophecy is impossible for the pilgrim to unpack—indeed he more or less ignores it and moves on. It is the first of many prophecies the pilgrim will hear (four in the Inferno, nine in the entire Comedy) that directly concern his own life. Only with the benefit of hindsight can we fully interpret it. The “woodland party” are the White Guelphs, so called because of the Cerchi family’s origins in the wooded countryside around Florence. So the first half of the prophecy predicts that the Black and White Guelphs will finally clash with violence (the May Day brawl that led to the mutilation of Ricoverino de’ Cerchi), after which the White party will oust the Blacks (referring either to the temporary exile of the leaders of both parties after May Day 1300, which led to the permanent exile of Corso Donati, or to the exile of some of the Black leaders after their June 1301 meeting in Santa Trinita).

The second half of the prophecy is more dire for Dante: the other party—Dante’s party, the White Guelphs—must fall within three years (“three suns”). The Black Guelphs will take over Florence with the help of someone who is presently “straddling the fence” (the idiomatic Italian word is piaggia, meaning literally to walk astride the shoreline, one foot on the sand and one in the surf). This is undoubtedly Boniface VIII, who at the time of the poem (April 1300) is still playing both sides in the conflict between the Black and White Guelphs.

Corso Donati and his allies in Rome had been plying the pope’s ear for years. They blamed the dissension in the Guelph party on the Cerchi, and they accused the White Guelphs of affiliating with Ghibellines. The Whites, for their part, did not deny the accusation, because they unwisely believed it would make them more intimidating to their would-be enemies; however, they did not openly oppose Boniface either. Their refusal to play a hand, one way or the other, ultimately backfired: their indecision made it easy for Boniface to cloak his motives from them, and their inaction made them appear weak to their political adversaries. Dante’s instinct had been right: Boniface was not to be trusted. The second half of Ciacco’s prophecy loomed inevitably.

In the summer of 1301, Charles of Valois (the brother of King Philip IV of France) led a force to Italy to help his cousin Charles II of Anjou reclaim Sicily. Though Charles II had been crowned King of Sicily in 1289 (shortly after lending his horsemen to the Florentine Guelphs for the Battle of Campaldino), the House of Anjou had not held the island since 1282, when his father Charles I was overthrown by the Sicilian Vespers rebellion. Boniface supported both Charleses, and enjoyed their support in turn.

Meanwhile, Corso Donati continued to press Boniface on the situation in Florence. Pistoia had already fallen to the Whites, and it was only a matter of time, so he said, before Florence too would fall—the Ghibellines would have it before long. So Boniface wrote to Charles of Valois, asking him to act as a “peacemaker” in Tuscany; secretly, he had made an agreement with Corso and the Black Guelphs, and his idea of making peace was to crush their political adversaries.

The Black Guelphs worked on Charles of Valois at the same time. When he reached Bologna, they sent ambassadors warning him to watch his back—for the Ghibellines were in control of Florence, so they said. When he came outside Pistoia (which was still controlled by the Whites), they warned him not to enter, lest the Pistoians take him prisoner; so Charles took a route around the city, showing himself to be hostile to the Pistoian Whites. At every stop along his journey, the Black Guelphs got to Charles before the Whites could; so when he’d greet the White emissaries, their gifts and words of praise were always preceded by warnings of their treachery. By the time he got down to Rome, the Blacks had filled (and continued to fill) his head with calumnies against the Whites.

And in Florence, the Black Guelphs worked on the Priors and Standard-bearer of Justice. When the new leaders were elected on October 7 (for the term beginning October 15), both sides took hope because these men were known to desire peace and unity—the White Guelphs saw in them a fair and reasonable leadership who could put the city on a path to unification, while the Blacks saw weakness and an opportunity to delude the leadership into facilitating their scheme to oust the Whites. Before the start of the term, the Black Guelphs sent groups of four and six men a day to the new leadership, to feed them flatteries and proffer their service in the name of peace. Among the newly elected Priors was Dino Compagni. In his Chronicle of Florence, he says that they didn’t trust the Black emissaries, but neither did they dare shut the door on them: “We granted their intention to make peace,” he writes, “when we should have been sharpening our swords” (2.5).

In early October, the White Guelph government of Florence sent a delegation to Rome to discern the pope’s intentions and to thwart the maneuverings of Corso and the Black Guelphs. According to Dino Compagni, that delegation failed because one of its members, Ubaldino Malavolti, delayed their journey in order to settle a property dispute between his family and the Florentine commune; by the time they arrived in the papal court, Corso Donati had already cut a deal with Boniface. The Black Guelphs paid Charles of Valois seventy thousand gold florins to come to their aid in Florence; by October 14, Charles and his army had already arrived in Siena (thirty miles south of Florence).

The leading White Guelphs in Florence, Dante among them, met to debate their next course of action. They decided to send three more ambassadors to Boniface, tasked with either preventing Charles from coming into Florence or ensuring that his coming would happen on their terms. According to Boccaccio (who, it must be noted, had a tendency to embellish), everyone in the meeting agreed that Dante should lead the embassy to Rome; to which Dante, after a brief silence, quipped: “If I go, who remains? If I remain, who goes?” In other words, who else but Dante himself could handle the challenges at home or abroad? In any event, Dante accepted his charge; he and two other ambassadors (Maso Minerbetti and Corazza da Signa) arrived in Rome before the end of October.

When Dante’s embassy met with Boniface, the pope assured them that he only intended to make peace in Florence. He sent the other two ambassadors home with his blessing, and with the understanding that they would ensure the obedience of the Florentines. But Dante, he detained in Rome. We can only imagine the circumstances. Perhaps Dante wore his heart on his sleeve, and his mistrust in Boniface got him into trouble. Corso Donati might have still been in Rome when the embassy arrived—maybe they saw him there, maybe they didn’t. But it seems possible that Corso, knowing Dante to have been wary of the pope in the past, warned Boniface not to let him return to Florence; or maybe Dante caught wind of their intrigue, and they couldn’t let him go. Whatever the circumstances, Dante remained in Rome in early November.

Meanwhile, at home, the Whites received ambassadors from Charles of Valois. A spokesman stated Charles’ purpose as a peacemaker, chosen by the pope because he and his lineage had never betrayed friend nor enemy. The Florentines, in response, sent word to Charles that he could enter the city, provided that he agreed in writing not to occupy the city nor its offices, nor to interfere with its laws and practices. Likewise, Dino Compagni (in his capacity as Prior) summoned leaders from both parties to the Baptistery of San Giovanni. He reminded them that each and every one of them had been baptized there as infants; and that, despite their competition for offices, he and the other Priors had sworn to divide offices equally among the parties from now on. Then, before the baptismal fonts, he made them swear upon a Bible that they would preserve peace and unity during Charles’ stay in the city.

With these protections in place, the Florentines let Charles of Valois into their city on All Saints’ Day (November 1, 1301). They had actually requested him to come on a different day, for fear of a riot or the outbreak of violence in the midst of the festivities; all the same, Charles and his eight hundred knights arrived on All Saints’ Day. The city was buzzing with celebration; he was welcomed with races and jousts. From abroad came knights from Lucca to honor him, knights from Perugia, knights from Siena led by one Cante da Gubbio who had once been podestà of Florence, and others from all over northern Italy—all of them, as it soon dawned on the White Guelphs in charge, enemies of the Cerchi. Among the rulers in attendance, two are listed in Dante’s catalogue of the tyrants of Romagna in Inferno 27: Malatestino Malatesta (one of the “mastiffs of Verucchio,” 27.46) and Maghinardo Pagani da Susinana (“the lion of the white cave,” 27.50). All told, some four hundred horsemen came into the city in addition to Charles’ eight hundred. The Priors invited Charles to stay at Santa Maria Novella, the safe and comfortable Dominican basilica where kings and cardinals had stayed in the past; but he chose instead to stay in the Palazzo Frescobaldi, a palace in the Oltrarno district just across the Santa Trinita bridge—where a strategic offense could be mounted against the city.

The Priors held a bipartisan council to discuss the city’s safety; but the Whites had lost their nerve and did not speak. Man after man came forward for the Blacks, each one blaming the Priors for the city’s troubles; they urged the Priors to elect a new leadership and allow the Black exiles (among them, Corso Donati) to return. The Priors caved to the first demand: though it was against the Ordinances of Justice, Dino Compagni called a special assembly to elect new Priors and a new Standard-bearer of Justice (these offices were elected by the current Priors and Standard-bearer of Justice, as well as the Captains of the Guilds and select popolani leaders). As promised, they elected three White Guelphs and three Black Guelphs to the priorate; for the Standard-bearer of Justice, which otherwise might have tipped the scales, they elected a man of little consequence. Then one of the Black leaders, a duplicitous popolano named Noffo Guidi, spoke to the assembly, though Dino Compagni tried to silence him. He brazenly asked the Priors to give a greater proportion of the priorate to the Black party. Dino Compagni replied that it would be treason, and said he’d rather feed his children to the dogs. The meeting was adjourned.

Charles of Valois posted his own soldiers at the city gates, ostensibly to protect the city. He repeatedly invited the Priors to dine with him in the Palazzo Frescobaldi; and repeatedly, they declined on legal grounds, since by law they had to live, eat, and sleep in the Palazzo della Signoria for the duration of their two-month terms. But secretly, they suspected the invitations were a ruse to draw them out and detain them. When Charles held an assembly at Santa Maria Novella (just outside the city wall) and asked the Priors to attend, they prudently decided that only three of them would go. According to Dino Compagni, had all six of them gone, Charles would have assassinated them outside the city gates; as it stood, he had nothing to say to the three who arrived, since he hadn’t prepared for an actual discussion.

With Florence at their mercy, the Black Guelphs grew ever bolder. Through bribery and intimidation, they gained spies among their adversaries’ guards and servants. They offered a thousand florins to twenty of the Priors’ personal guards to kill their masters, but the plot was discovered before any harm could be done. They set up two siege engines for launching stones across the Arno, and they called men to gather from the surrounding countryside, including Corso Donati and the other Black exiles. All of this went down over just a handful of days.

The Whites, ostensibly in charge of Florence, felt their grip loosening. They declared harsh penalties for violent offenses, and they set up the axe and block in the piazza as a warning to agitators—but it was nothing more than a show. While the Blacks geared up for war, the Whites did hardly more than look on.

On November 4, just three days after Charles of Valois had entered the city, the Black Guelphs and their allies began mustering in the Oltrarno district.

Coming Soon

Coming soon!

Part 2 | Part 4