[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1610459561085{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;background-color: #d03e3b !important;}”][vc_column]
lorence, March 10 1302: \u201cAlighieri Dante is found guilty of barratry, fraud, falsity, wilful misconduct, malice, unjust extortion practices, illicit proceeds, and pederasty; and he is sentenced to pay a fine of 5000 florins, is permanently banned from holding office, is perpetually banished (in absentia), and if he is caught, will be sent to the stake until death cometh.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Libro del chiodo – Archivio di Stato di Firenze)<\/p>\n
On that date\u2015as Boccaccio writes, \u201cHe, thus, left his wife and small children in the hands of fate, and exited that city to which he was never to return,\u201d\u2015the Poet\u2019s exile begins.
\nDante traveled north of Florence. On June 8 of that same year, in fact, in the Abbey of San Godenzo the Poet and sixteen Florentines promised to compensate the Ubaldini\u2015powerful feudal lords of Mugello who had dominated the territory for many years and controlled the two sides of the Apennines between Florence and Bologna\u2015for any damage that might result from what was foreseen to be a long and expensive war against the Black Guelphs, who had political control over the Tuscan city. The records preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, draw up by the notary Ser Giovanni Buto of Ampinana (a locality in Vicchio) bear witness to this fact.<\/p>\n
In those first years of his exile, Dante did not distance himself excessively from Florence, because he hoped to return to his homeland: he was, in that period, a guest of the Ordelaffi family of Forli, and most likely of their Ubaldini allies, who are cited in numerous parts of the Divine Comedy. Among the numerous fortresses and castles they possessed to control both sides of the Tuscan-Romagna Apennines, the principal and most unconquerable of them was Montaccianico Castle in Sant\u2019Agata (Scarperia), which was situated along the main communication route leading North.<\/p>\n
As the Florentine historian, Dino Compagni, states in his Cronica<\/em>: in March 1303, an expedition lead by the Ordelaffi and the White Guelphs left Montacciano for Pulicciano. The castle\u2015once owned by the Ubaldini family\u2015was not distant from Borgo San Lorenzo, stood on an important communications route that connected Mugello and Faenza, and, in 1260, was under Florentine rule. Another historian, Giovanni Villani, also makes mention of it in his Nuova Cronica<\/em>. The battles between the Ubaldini, the Ghibelline allies, the Florentine exiles and the city of Florence went on continually until 1306 when the Black Florentines decided to attack the fortress at Montaccianico, which was razed to the ground by the end of August, \u201cso that not a house or stone upon stone remained.\u201d<\/p>\n We don\u2019t know if Dante took part in the battles of Pulicciano and Montaccianico\u2015even if, before becoming a poet, he had been a man-at-arms. What is certain is that he frequented, in the first years of his exile, the part of the territory that includes Mugello and the bordering Romagna and that he was enchanted by the beauty of the land. How can we, with regards to this, not recall Inferno Canto XVI, which has made the enchanting Acqua Cheta falls in San Benedetto Alpe famous? A powerful and ambitious feudal lord of the three Apennine river valleys Lamone, Senio and Santerno, Maghinardo founded Brisighella, became the Captain of the People and Podest\u00e0 of Faenza and Imola, the Captain of the People of Forl\u00ec, and had control over numerous castles in strategic places. The poet puts him in the Inferno for he \u201cWho changes sides \u2019twixt summer-time and winter;\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0 having allied with the Guelphs in Tuscany and the Ghibellines in Romagna; and in Purgatory, Dante prophesizes the death of the \u201cdevil\u201d\u00a0 Pagani, which took place in August 1302.<\/p>\n Dante was also the contemporary and fellow citizen of Giotto (1267-1337), the great artist who was born in Mugello in Vespignano (Vicchio). Legend has it that they were friends but, although they never actually met, they surely had great respect for each other. In fact, in Purgatory Canto XI, Dante writes: \u201cIn painting Cimabue thought that he\/ Should hold the field, now Giotto has the cry, \/ So that the other\u2019s fame is growing dim.\u201d
\nScarpetta and his allies, defeated and chased out by the Florentine Podest\u00e0, Fulcieri da Calboli (depicted in Dante\u2019s Purgatory as a \u201chunter\u201d of human flesh), \u201ctook refuge on Monte Accenico\u201d before returning to the other side of the Apennines.<\/p>\n
\nThe poet\u2019s ties to this area of the Apennines, however, are dated prior to 1302: Dante, in fact, was acquainted with Maghinardo Pagani da Susinana, who fought with him in the Guelph forces in the famous battle of Campaldino on July 11, 1289.<\/p>\n
\nIn the frescoes found in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, among the rows of saints, Dante is portrayed behind Giotto\u2019s self-portrait.
\nAfter Dante\u2019s death, Giotto and his school immortalised him in the fresco of The Last Judgement found in Bargello Palace in Florence.<\/p>\n