Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
He fought in 1289 at the battle of Campaldino against the city of Arezzo and the Ghibellines who had taken possession of that city. Florence had been strangely peaceful in his childhood because the Guelfs were her unquestioned masters at the time. It must have been a relief to Florentines to go forth to external warfare!
In the days of the Lombard League, of Campaldino and Montaperti, the citizens could fight, hand to hand, round their carroccio or banner, without much discipline being required; but when it came to fortifying towns against cannon, to drilling bodies of heavily armed cavalry, acting by the mere dexterity of their movements; when war became a science and an art, then the citizen had necessarily to be left out, and adventurers and poor nobles had to form armies of mercenaries, making warfare their sole profession.
"On the appointed day the men of Florence advanced their standards to go into the enemies' land, and passed by Casentino along an ill road where, had the enemy found them, they had received no little damage; but such was not the will of God. And they came near to Bibbiena, at a place called Campaldino where was the enemy, and there they halted in array of battle.
In his quiet way he is a great artist. There is an Herodotean picturesqueness as well as an Herodotean simplicity in such a picture as that of Dante's first battle-field, the Florentine victory of Campaldino:
In 1289 Dante had been present at the battle of Campaldino, fighting with the Guelphs against the Ghibellines, and on settling down in Florence and taking to politics it was as a Guelph, or rather as one of that branch of the Guelph party which had become White the Bianchi as opposed to the other party which was Black the Neri.
He began to take an active part in politics, and in 1295 was formally enrolled in the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries. On June 11, 1289, he fought as a volunteer in the battle of Campaldino. Amid these scenes of ambition and warfare he fell away for a time from his holiest aspirations.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking