88 Dante Sexcentenary Lectures
OftheearthandtheservantofGod? . . . Ifmyprophetic
spirit be not deceived, your city, worn out with long suf-
ferings, shall be delivered at the last into the hands of the
stranger, after the greatest part of you has been destroyed
in death or in captivity, and the few that shall be left to
endure exile shall witness her downfall with weeping and
lamentation.”
Dante later even urged the emperor to lay aside all other
undertakings and press the siege of Florence. And finally
the emperor did come, though Dante would not accompany
him, since he did not wish to witness the overthrow of his
beloved city. But Florence withstood the siege, and not
long after the emperor himself died.
With him fell Dante’s hopes of a reunited Italy and
of a return to Florence, for his fierce championship of the
Imperial cause had raised bitter feeling against him in
Florence. So bitter, indeed, was the feeling that in August,
1315, a fresh sentence was pronounced against him and the
other exiles, this time including his sons. In the next year,
however, an amnesty was declared and permission granted
for the majority of the exiles to return under certain degrad-
ing conditions, including the payment of a fine and per-
formance of penance in the Baptistery. Yet from this
amnesty Dante and a number of others were excluded.
Many of the exiles appear to have accepted the terms, but
Dante, who seems at first to have been unaware of his ex-
clusion, magnificently rejected them.
“Is this, then,” he wrote to a friend in Florence, “is this
the generous recall of Dante Alighieri to his native city,
after the miseries of nearly fifteen years of exile? Is this
the reward of innocence manifest to all the world, of un-
ceasing toil and sweat in study? Far be it from the friend
of philosophy, so senseless a degradation, befitting only a