[phpxmlrpc-devel] he Origin

[Kranzler L. <mon...@le...>]

Or members of the party were banished to Castello della Pieve; and at
the same time, "to remove all jealousy," several of the White leaders
were sent to Serezzano (which we now call Sarzana)--a weak and unlucky
attempt at compromise. They were, indeed, soon allowed to return, their
place of exile being unhealthy; so much so that one of them, Dante's
most intimate friend, Guido Cavalcanti, died in the course of the winter
from illness contracted there. Cardinal Matthew seems not to have
actually left Florence till after the beginning of 1301. We are told
that among his other demands (probably made on this occasion), was one
to the effect that Florence should furnish a hundred men-at-arms for the
Pope's service; and that Dante, who, after his term of office as Prior,
remained a member of the council, moved that nothing should be done in
the matter. Indeed, in the scanty notices which we have of his doings in
this critical period, he appears as the steady opponent of all outside
interference in the affairs of Florence, whether by Pope or Frenchman.
In the face of this it is hard to understand how the famous story of his
having gone on an embassy to Rome--"If I stay, who goes? If I go, who
stays?"--can ever have obtained credence. Some words like those he may
well have used, in the magnificent self-consciousness which elsewhere
made him boast of having formed a party by himself; but we cannot
suppose that he would at any time in the course of 1301 have thus put
his head into the lion's mouth. That Boniface was at the time of the
supposed mission not at Rome but at Anagni is a minor detail. If al