Principal Events in Dante’s Life
1250Death of Emperor Frederick II; for sixty years there will be no crowned Holy Roman Emperor, and there will be no effective incumbent in Dante’s lifetime.
1260Battle of Montaperti. The Sienese Ghibellines, in alliance with the Florentine Ghibellines led by Farinata degli Uberti, defeat the Florentine Guelfs and expel them from the city.
1265Dante is born in Florence.
1266Battle of Benevento. Manfred, the illegitimate son of Frederick II, is killed and imperial hopes in the Italian peninsula die; the Guelfs return to power in Florence.
c. 1283Dante establishes himself as a leading love poet in Florence.
1289Battle of Campaldino. Dante serves with the Florentine Guelf forces against the Ghibelline city of Arezzo.
c. 1292Dante assembles an anthology of his poems with linking narrative to form the Vita nova, in celebration of his love for Beatrice, a Florentine girl who had died two years earlier.
c. 1293Dante embarks on the study of philosophy; he goes on to write poems on philosophical themes.
1293The Ordinances of Justice mark a radical move towards a more democratic political system in Florence: more than seventy powerful elite families are excluded from eligibility for office and the right to vote, while major (and later minor) guild members now become eligible.
1294Boniface VIII becomes pope, following the abdication of the hermit pope Celestine V.
1295Dante enters political life in the commune of Florence, having enrolled in the guild of physicians and apothecaries; in the following years, he serves on several councils; the Guelfs split into two factions, which will become known as Blacks and Whites.
1300June 15–August 15: Dante serves as one of the six priors who exercise executive power under the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia, or Standard-Bearer of Justice. Guido Cavalcanti is sent into exile and dies later in the summer.
1300Easter: the fictional date of Dante’s journey to the realms of the afterlife as it will be described in the Commedia.
1301October: Dante is absent from Florence when the Black Guelfs, whose leaders had recently been exiled, stage a coup and return to power (he is probably on a mission representing the commune at the papal curia in Rome).
1302January 27: in his absence, Dante is fined, excluded from public office and banished from Tuscany on a fabricated charge of corruption.
March 10: the sentence is confirmed; if Dante falls into the commune’s power, he will be burnt at the stake.
December: Boniface proclaims the supreme authority of the church in temporal affairs in the bull Unam sanctam.
1303October: death of Boniface. Election of Benedict XI, who dies the following year.
1304Dante becomes a “party on his own,” abandoning his allegiance to his fellow White Guelf exiles; in the following years, he travels extensively all over Italy.
c. 1304–c. 1308Dante writes the De vulgari eloquentia, his treatise on vernacular speech, and the Convivio, which is to provide an extensive prose commentary on his philosophical poems (both works remain unfinished).
1305Election of Pope Clement V, a Frenchman who never comes to Rome; the papacy is subsequently established in Avignon.
1308Henry of Luxembourg is chosen by the imperial electors, and has Clement’s backing.
c. 1308Dante starts the Commedia, which he works on until shortly before his death.
1309January: Henry is crowned as Emperor Henry VII at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen in German, Aquisgrana in Italian).
1310October: Henry VII embarks on his Italian campaign. Dante writes an open letter in Latin to the rulers and people of Italy, urging them to welcome the emperor, who will bring peace and justice. Pope Boniface is posthumously brought to trial by Philip the Fair of France; the charges include nepotism, usury, sorcery, heresy and atheism.
1311January: Henry VII is crowned in Milan.
March 31: Dante writes to the Florentines, urging them to recognise Henry.
April 17: Dante writes to the emperor, urging him to act against Florence, “the viper that turns against the vitals of her mother.”
1312June: Henry VII is crowned in Rome, but (because of papal opposition) not in Saint Peter’s.
1313April: Henry declares all men subject to the emperor’s authority.
June: Clement’s bull Pastoralis cura rejects imperial claims to overlordship.
August: Henry VII dies; the imperial electors fail to reach agreement on a successor.
1314(at the very earliest and possibly much later) Dante writes the Monarchia.
1315June: an amnesty is offered to the Florentine exiles, provided they acknowledge their guilt; Dante rejects the offer.
October: Dante’s exile from Florence is reconfirmed for life and is now extended to his children (his punishment if captured will be decapitation); his later years are spent in Verona at the court of Can Grande della Scala and in Ravenna at the court of Guido Novello da Polenta.
c. 1320Dante writes the Questio and the Egloge.
1321Dante dies at Ravenna.
c. 1325Dante’s son Jacopo takes a complete copy of the Commedia to Florence, where it immediately becomes popular and is widely copied.
c. 1327The Dominican Guido Vernani writes the De reprobatione Monarchiae, a savage attack on Dante’s political treatise. He does not name Dante, but refers to him as “the vessel of the Devil.”
1329According to Boccaccio, the Monarchia is publicly burnt as a heretical text in Bologna, but a plan to burn Dante’s bones with his treatise is foiled.
1335The Commedia is banned by the Dominican order in Tuscany.
1336The oldest securely dated surviving copy of the poem is produced.
1472The editio princeps of the Commedia is published at Foligno in April; other editions follow in the same year at Mantua and Venice. A few years later, editions with commentaries are printed in Venice, Milan and Florence.
1554The Monarchia is placed on the Vatican’s Index of Forbidden Books, from which it is removed only in the twentieth century.
1559The editio princeps of the Monarchia is published in Basle.