In exile Dante transferred his
allegiance to the Ghibellines though he upheld the Guelf view as to the
primacy of the Church. Subsequently he tried, but in vain, to form a
party independent of Guelf, Ghibelline, Bianchi or Neri.
May I conclude this chapter by giving you another view of Dante's
environment? To point out the degeneracy of Florence, Dante becomes a
_laudator acti temporis_ in a picture of the earlier Florence that
has never been equalled.
"Florence was abiding in peace, sober and modest. She had not necklace
or coronal or women with ornamented shoes or girdle which was more to be
looked at than the person. Nor yet did the daughter at her birth give
fear to her father, for the time and dowry did not outrun measure on
this or that side. She had not houses empty of families. I saw
Bellencion Berti go girt with leather and bone and his lady come from
the mirror with unpainted face. I saw him of the Nerlo and him of the
Vecchio satisfied with unlined skin and their ladies with the spindle
and the distaff. O! fortunate women, each was sure of her burial place"
(Paradiso IV, 97).
But time changed all that. With her population vastly increased in
Dante's day and her commerce on all seas and on every road and her
banking system controlling the markets of Europe and the East, Florence
had become such a mighty city that Pope Boniface VIII could say to the
Florentine embassy who came to Rome to take part in the Jubilee of 1300:
"Florence is the greatest of cities.
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