IV.

Dante's Political Life

During the next few years Dante was active in the turbulent political life of Florence. Records dating from 1295 indicate that he held several local offices in that year. He was sent on a diplomatic mission to San Gimignano in 1300 and later the same year was elected one of the six priors, or magistrates, of Florence, a post in which he served for only two months. The rivalry between the two factions within the Guelph Party of Florence, the Blacks, who saw in the pope an ally against imperial power, and the Whites, who were determined to remain independent of both pope and Holy Roman emperor, became intense during Dante’s tenure. At his urging, the leaders of both factions were exiled in order to preserve peace in the city. Through the influence of Pope Boniface VIII, however, the leaders of the Blacks returned to Florence in 1301 and seized power. In 1302 they banned Dante from the city for a period of two years and fined him heavily. Failing to make payment, he was condemned to death should he ever return to Florence.

Dante’s exile was spent partly in Verona and partly in other northern Italian cities; he reached Paris between 1307 and 1309. His political beliefs underwent a pronounced conversion during this period. Eventually embracing the cause of the Ghibellines, he hoped for the unification of Europe under the reign of an enlightened emperor.

During the early years of his exile Dante wrote two important works in Latin. De Vulgari Eloquentia (Concerning the Common Speech, 1304-1305) is a treatise on the uses and advantages of the Italian language. It defends the vernacular as a literary medium, attempts to establish certain criteria of good usage in written Italian, and concludes with a section devoted to criticism of Italian poetry. The unfinished Convivio (Banquet, c. 1304-07) was intended to be a digest, in 15 books, of all the knowledge of the time. The first book was to be introductory, and the remaining 14 were to take the form of commentary on 14 poems by Dante. Only the first 4 books, however, were completed.

Dante’s political hopes were strongly aroused by the arrival in Italy in 1310 of Henry VII, king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor. Henry’s purpose was to bring Italy under his sovereignty in fact as well as in name. In a feverish burst of political activity, Dante wrote to many Italian princes and political leaders, urging them to welcome the emperor and entreating them to look upon Henry’s suzerainty as a means of resolving the bitter strife among and within the Italian cities. Henry’s death in Siena in 1313 brought Dante’s hopes to an abrupt end. The Latin treatise De Monarchia (On Monarchy), probably written during the period of Henry’s stay in Italy, is an exposition of Dante’s political philosophy, including the need for a supranational Holy Roman Empire, as well as for complete separation of church and state.