66 Dante Sexcentenary Lectures
from the city of Florence, his “wandering as a stranger
through almost every region to which our language reaches,”
as he himself says, and the productions of his matured
genius, the Lyrical Poems, the “Convivio,” his Latin writ-
ings, and his great masterpiece, the “Divine Comedy.”
It can be seen, therefore, that Dante’s life is sharply
divided into two unequal portions. The first and longer
portion, nearly two thirds of his life, falls in the last half
of the thirteenth century, and is lived wholly in Florence
and its immediate neighborhood, and under comparatively
comfortable material circumstances; the second and shorter
portion, a full third of his life, falls in the fourteenth cen-
tury and was spent in exile, mostly in northern and central
Italy, and under circumstances of humiliating and “pinching
poverty,” but in it Dante produced the great mass of his
creative work.
To understand the details of Dante’s life, particularly the
reasons for his exile, some knowledge of Italian political
conditions is necessary. Therefore it will be well, at this
point, briefly to review the lines of historical development
which throw light on those conditions.
Florence itself was bubbling and seething with new life—
that young new life of commerce and industry which had
already raised the middle classes of the northern Italian
cities into European prominence. It had given them
wealth, organization, influence, and set them at successful
war against the anarchic feudal nobility which had hindered
their progress. They had become factors in the tangled
web of forces that strove for political mastery in the dis-
tressful Italy of that period.
At the center of this web of intrigue sat the triple-tiaraed
Popes, ever watchful for the undying interests of their
sacred spouse, the Body of Christ, the Church of God on
earth. They were eager to build up an independent political