ali popoli gli negherebbero
l'ubbidienza? Quale Italiano gli negherebbe l'ossequio? AD OGNUNO PUZZA
QUESTO BARBARO DOMINIO."[601]

18.

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar.
Stanza lvii. line 1.

Dante was born in Florence, in the year 1261. He fought in two battles,
was fourteen times ambassador, and once prior of the republic. When the
party of Charles of Anjou triumphed over the Bianchi, he was absent on
an embassy to Pope Boniface VIII., and was condemned to two years'
banishment, and to a fine of 8000 lire; on the non-payment of which he
was further punished by the sequestration of all his property. The
republic, however, was not content with this satisfaction, for in 1772
was discovered in the archives at Florence a sentence in which Dante is
the eleventh of a list of fifteen condemned in 1302 to be burnt alive;
_Talis perveniens igne comburatur sic quod moriatur_. The pretext for
this judgment was a proof of unfair barter, extortions, and illicit
gains. _Baracteriarum iniquarum extorsionum et illicitorum
lucrorum_,[602] and with such an accusation it is not strange that Dante
should have always protested his innocence, and the injustice of his
fellow-citizens. His appeal to Florence was accompanied by another to
the Emperor Henry; and the death of that Sovereign in 1313 was the
signal for a sentence of irrevocable banishment. He had before lingered
near Tuscany with hopes of recall; then travelled into the north of
Italy, where Verona had to boast of his longest residence; and he
finally settled at Ravenna, which was his ordinary but not constant
abode until his death. The refusal of the Venetians to grant him a
public audience, on the part of Guido Novello da Polenta, his protector,
is said to have been the principal cause of this event, which happened
in 1321. He was buried ("in sacra minorum aede") at Ravenna, in a
handsome tomb, which was erected by Guido, restored by Bernardo Bembo in
1483, praetor for that republic which had refused to hear him, again
restored by Cardinal Corsi, in 1692, and replaced by a more magnificent
sepulchre, constructed in 1780 at the expense of the Cardinal Luigi
Valenti Gonzaga. The offence or misfortune of Dante was an attachment to
a defeated party, and, as his least favourable biographers allege
against him, too great a freedom of speech and haughtiness of manner.
But the next age paid ho