Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265. At the time, Florentine politics were vicious, frequently culminating in mass bloodshed. Supporters of the Ghibellines were allied with imperial interests, and partisans of the Guelfs were sympathetic to the papacy. Dante’s family identified with the Guelfs, who were in exile at the time of his birth, but who decisively defeated the Ghibellines the following year, and promptly took total control of Florence. The mood in the city during Dante’s childhood was therefore largely triumphalist and exuberant, with Florence seeing itself on a par with Rome.
Aged 30, Dante joined the guild of physicians and apothecaries, and used it as a route to enter politics. Although the imperial Ghibellines were long gone from Florence, the city had again fractured into two camps. This time it was the White Guelfs and the Black Guelfs. Dante was allied with the Whites,...