guild of physicians and apothecaries. This was a perilous
time, as the triumphant Guelfs had fallen into vehe-
ment strife among themselves; thus in Inferno 6, Dante
refers to the città partita, the divided city. Later, Dante
was forced to recognize, bitterly, that the antagonism
between Guelfs and Ghibellines had been replicated in
the division within the Guelfs. This factionalism gave
birth to the Black Guelf party, which was more or less
intent on imposing severe restrictions on the defeated
aristocratics; and the White Guelfs, who were more
conciliatory. Dante was elected prior in the fateful bi-
mester (two-month period) of 1300, and he became an
active opponent of intrusions by the papacy in communal
matters. These political activities heralded a signifi cant
change: Dante was gradually becoming opposed to the
basis of Florentine hegemony, the alliance among the
Guelf party, the papacy, and France. In time, he would
oppose all three; in fact, in his later political prose work
and in the Commedia his voice expresses a lofty, if quali-
fi ed, Ghibelline—that is, imperial—idealism.
The alliance of the Black Guelfs with the papacy
and France, the alliance that had been responsible for
the defeat of the Ghibellines a generation earlier, ef-
fectively became a deceitful conspiracy responsible for
the ejection of the White Guelfs from Florence. Thus
in 1302, Dante himself became an exile. The course of
his peregrinations remains somewhat obscure. At fi rst,
he may have made temporary league with remnants of
the exiled Ghibellines in Tuscany, who had never relin-
quished their strong though illusory hope of staging a
military return to Florence; but if so, he soon wearied of
these false allies and became a party unto himself. For
the remainder of his life he moved from court to court,
mainly in the principalities of northern Italy.
Of one thing we can be relatively sure: Dante would
not have written his Commedia without the bitter experi-
ence of exile. This is one reason why the poem is fi ction-
ally dated as taking place in 1300—that is, at the time
of Dante’s most active political involvement, which led
to his exile—and why its central plotline is his growing
awareness, through a series of cryptic prophecies, of an
impending disastrous blow. It also helps to explain the
values of divine comedy itself: along his way, Dante the
pilgrim acquires the spiritual strength and courage he
needs to cope with the tragedy of history. As a result,
when he receives the clearest indication of his fate (Pa ra -
diso, 17), he already possesses the means to surmount
it. Exile is the pivotal event and the central spiritual
struggle of the poem. It becomes in fact a fortunate fall,
without which Dante would not have been moved to ap-
propriate the actual meaning of the philosophy of Christ.
This explains why, beyond the classical prototypes of
a visit to the underworld, the grander background of
Dante’s journey is Christ’s passion and, particularly in
the Inferno, Christ’s descent into hell.
Early in his exile, however, in order to clear his name
of whatever slander may have been spread about him
as a fugitive, Dante set about composing Convivio (The
Banquet), a work of high seriousness that was intended
to restore his reputation not only as a poet but as a moral
philosopher. There is every indication that when he
began writing Convivio, he was committing himself to
a major undertaking. He projected a work of consider-
able length: fi fteen books, fourteen of which would
be extended commentaries showing the philosophical
arguments of his poems. Convivio is, like Vita nuova,
largely a collection of the poems he had written during
the preceding decade, but in this work the poems are
held together by more elaborate commentary. Appar-
ently, Dante was never content with the experience of
a single poem; rather, he was ever ready to place the
poetic experience in a frame of larger coherence and
meaning. Dante completed only four of the books he
had projected for Convivio, but they are valuable by
themselves, detailing his ideas about philosophy, al-
legory, and nobility (gentilezza). His arguments about
gentilezza appear in Book 4, which is his greatest work
before the Commedia; he interrupts Book 4 to insert his
fi rst extended argument for the necessity and legitimacy
of the empire.
Dante’s career took another crucial turn while he
was in exile. The hopes of all the Florentine exiles were
revitalized in 1308 by the emergence of a new emperor,
Henry VII. Stirred by new possibilities, Dante began
addressing epistles in Latin to the nobles of Italy, urg-
ing them to support this great hope. These epistles are
evidence of the high esteem in which Dante was held
throughout Italy, and of his personal authority. But Hen-
ry delayed unaccountably, as Dante saw it, and also fell
victim to deceit on the part of the papacy; shortly after
the emperor arrived in Italy in 1310, his appeal began
to fade and the French pope, Clement V, turned against
him. It was in the midst of this activity and controversy
that Dante wrote one of the important polemical works
of the late Middle Ages in Italy: Monarchia (Monarchy,
c. 1313). Here, particularly in the third book, Dante uses
his philosophical training to good advantage. Formerly,
he had argued that there was a need for imperial rule
but had avoided alienating the papacy. In Monarchia
he disputes the papacy’s various arguments that impe-
rial power is derivative and hence subordinate. Dante’s
arguments—clear, incisive, and logical—show that his
philosophical training in making rational distinctions
had become a very powerful tool. The arguments he
makes here are those he would also make throughout
the Commedia: that secular authority itself has a concern
with justice and a power derived from the deity indepen-
dently. Dante’s position is actually more complex than
this, however, because he tries to steer a course between
secularism and theocracy. On the one hand, he is wellDANTE ALIGHIERI