de' Peppoli, the rich man, and
his followers._ Sec. 133.--_How the emperor of Constantinople had war
with his sons._ Sec. 134.--_How Frederick of Sicily was excommunicated,
and how he had his son crowned over the kingdom._ Sec. 135.--_How the
Florentines sent to Frioli for horsemen._

Sec. 136.--_Concerning the poet Dante Alighieri of Florence._

[Sidenote: 1321 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Inf. i. 87.]

[Sidenote: Epistola vii.]

[Sidenote: viii.]

[Sidenote: Cf. Canzone, 58-63.]

In the said year 1321, in the month of July, Dante Alighieri, of
Florence, died in the city of Ravenna, in Romagna, having returned
from an embassy to Venice in the service of the lords of Polenta, with
whom he was living; and in Ravenna, before the door of the chief
church, he was buried with great honour, in the garb of a poet and of
a great philosopher. He died in exile from the commonwealth of
Florence, at the age of about fifty-six years. This Dante was a
citizen of an honourable and ancient family in Florence, of the Porta
San Piero, and our neighbour; and his exile from Florence was by
reason that when M. Charles of Valois, of the House of France, came to
Florence in the year 1301 and banished the White party, as has been
afore mentioned at its due time, the said Dante was among the chief
governors of our city, and pertained to that party, albeit he was a
Guelf; and, therefore, for no other fault he was driven out and
banished from Florence with the White party; and went to the
university at Bologna, and afterwards at Paris, and in many parts of
the world. This man was a great scholar in almost every branch of
learning, albeit he was a layman; he was a great poet and philosopher,
and a perfect rhetorician alike in prose and verse, a very noble
orator in public speaking, supreme in rhyme, with the most polished
and beautiful style which in our language ever was up to his time and
beyond it. In his youth he wrote the book of The New Life, of Love;
and afterwards, when he was in exile, he wrote about twenty very
excellent odes, treating of moral questions and of love; and he wrote
three noble letters among others; one he sent to the government of
Florence complaining of his undeserved exile; the second he sent to
the Emperor Henry when he was besieging Brescia, reproving him for his
delay, almost in a prophetic strain; the third to the Italian
cardinals, at the time of the vacancy after the death of Pope Clement,
praying them to unite i