rder to strengthen themselves against the Emperor,
determined to relieve from ban and to recall from exile many of their
banished fellow-citizens, confident that on returning home they would
strengthen the city in its resistance against the Emperor. But to the
general amnesty which was issued on the 2d of September there were large
exceptions; and impressive evidence of the multitude of the exiles is
afforded by the fact that more than a thousand were expressly excluded
from the benefit of pardon, and were to remain banished and condemned as
before. In the list of those thus still regarded as enemies of Florence
stands the name of Dante.

The death of the Emperor was followed eight months later by that of the
Pope, Clement V., under whom the papal throne had been removed from Rome
to Avignon. There seemed a chance, if but feeble, that a new pope might
restore the Church to the city which was its proper home, and thus at
least one of the wounds of Italy be healed. The Conclave was bitterly
divided; month after month went by without a choice, the fate of the
Church and of Italy hanging uncertain in the balance. Dante, in whom
religion and patriotism combined as a single passion, saw with grief
that the return of the Church to Italy was likely to be lost through the
selfishness, the jealousies, and the avarice of her chief prelates; and
under the impulse of the deepest feeling he addressed a letter of
remonstrance, reproach, and exhortation to the Italian cardinals, who
formed but a small minority in the Conclave, but who might by union and
persistence still secure the election of a pope favorable to the return.
This letter is full of a noble but too vehement zeal. "It is for you,
being one at heart, to fight manfully for the Bride of Christ; for the
seat of the Bride, which is Rome; for our Italy, and in a word, for the
whole commonwealth of pilgrims upon earth." But words were in vain; and
after a struggle kept up for two years and three months, a pope was at
last elected who was to fix the seat of the Papacy only the more firmly
at Avignon. Once more Dante had to bear the pain of disappointment of
hopes in which selfishness had no part.

And now for years he disappears from sight. What his life was he tells
in a most touching passage near the beginning of his 'Convito':--"From
the time when it pleased the citizens of Florence, the fairest and most
famous daughter of Rome, to cast me out from her sweetest bosom (in
whic