in 1302, while he was in Rome on a diplomatic mission to the Pope, the Blacks in Florence seized power with the help of the French (and pro-Pope) Charles of Valois. In this divisive atmosphere Dante rose to a position of leadership. The Whites were more opposed to Papal power than the Blacks, and tended to favor the emperor, so in fact the preoccupations of the White Guelfs were much like those of the defeated Ghibellines. Instead, the Guelf party divided between the Whites and the Blacks (Dante was a White Guelf). By 1289 in the battle of Campaldino the Ghibellines largely disappeared from Florence. The Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor were political rivals for much of this time period, and in general the Guelfs were in favor of the Pope, while the Ghibellines supported Imperial power.

The Guelfs and the Ghibellines were the two major factions, and in fact that division was important in all of Italy and other countries as well.

Renaissance Florence was a thriving, but not a peaceful city: different opposing factions continually struggled for dominance there. Politics as well as love deeply influenced Dante's literary and emotional life. Dante attributed all the heavenly virtues to her soul and imagined, in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy, that she was his guardian angel who alternately berated and encouraged him on his search for salvation. In fact, Beatrice married another man, Simone di' Bardi, and died when Dante was 25, so their relationship existed almost entirely in Dante's imagination, but she nonetheless plays an extremely important role in his poetry. He first saw the woman, or rather the child, who was to become the poetic love of his life when he was almost nine years old and she was some months younger. Dante Alighieri was born in the city-state Florence in 1265. Dante Alighieri, or simply Dante (May 14/J– September 13/14, 1321), is one of the greatest poets in the Italian language with the comic story-teller, Boccaccio, and the poet, Petrarch, he forms the classic trio of Italian authors.

The divine comedy dante book