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Updated: June 28, 2025
While he surrounded himself with these forces and allies, it happened at Messer Matteo Visconti was attacked by the Guelphs of Piacenza, who had driven out the Ghibellines with the assistance of a Florentine army and the King Ruberto.
The statue was found and set upon a column near the edge of the river, on a spot which is now the head of the Ponte Vecchio. True to its pugnacious character, it brought nothing but turbulence and bloodshed upon the town. The long and memorable feuds between the Guelphs and Ghibellines began by the slaying of Buondelmonte in his wedding dress, at the base of the statue.
This is due perhaps to the fact that odium figulinum in the case of men, is limited to their everyday affairs, but with women embraces the whole sex; since they have only one kind of business. Even when they meet in the street, they look at each other like Guelphs and Ghibellines.
If Milton's participation in a political battle fought to save at once the political and spiritual life of England was degrading, Dante's participation in the faction fight between the Guelphs and Ghibellines must have been still more so; yet if Dante had been a mere man of leisure would he have written the "Divina Commedia"? Who are these sublime artists in poetry that are pinnacled so high above the "frays" and "brawls" of vulgar humanity?
At the age of thirty-five he was elected prior, or supreme magistrate of Florence, an honor from which he dates all his subsequent misfortunes. During his priorship, the citizens were divided into two factions called the Neri and Bianchi, as bitterly opposed to each other as both had been to the Ghibellines.
Then he became a Ghilbeiline. He looked for help beyond the Alps. He hoped that a mighty emperor might come and re-establish unity and order. Alas! he hoped in vain. The Ghibellines were driven out of Florence in the year 1802.
In order to put an end to the struggle of the Guelphs and Ghibellines at Forli, he persuaded the inhabitants to rebuild the city walls and to begin the works under a constellation indicated by himself. If then two men, one from each party, at the same moment put a stone into the foundation, there would henceforth and for ever be no more party divisions in Forli.
From beneath them came the ladies but in strange guise. No gold nor jewels were carried by them, but each one was bending under the weight of her husband, whom she thus hoped to secure from the vengeance of the Ghibellines.
The direct outcome of this was that the Ghibellines predominating in council Cesena sent an embassy to Rome to beg his Holiness to give the lordship of the fief to the Duke of Valentinois. To this the Pope acceded, and on August 2 Cesare was duly appointed Lord Vicar of Cesena.
The spirit of faction raged at Florence. Circumstances, especially the distracted condition of the country, led him to ally himself with the Ghibellines, and to favor the imperial cause. All that he saw and suffered until he breathed his last, away from his native city, at Ravenna, combined to stir within him the thoughts and passions which find expression in his verse.
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