Heroes of Modern Europe

								

grave fears that Beatrice must die, and mourned sublimely when the sad
event took place on the ninth day of one of the summer months of 1290.
"In their ninth year they had met, nine years after, they had spoken;
she died on the ninth day of the month and the ninetieth year of the
century."
Real life began with the poet's marriage when he was twenty-eight, for
he allied himself to the noble Donati by marrying Gemma of that house.
Little is known of the wife, but she bore seven children and seems to
have been devoted.  Dante still had his spiritual love for Beatrice in
his heart, and planned a wonderful poem in which she should be
celebrated worthily.
Dante began to take up the active duties of a citizen in 1293 when the
people of Florence rose against the nobles and took all their political
powers from them.  The aristocratic party had henceforth to submit to
the humiliation of enrolling themselves as members of some guild or art
if they wished to have political rights in the Republic.  The poet was
not too proud to adopt this course, and was duly entered in the
register of the art of doctors and apothecaries.  It was not necessary
that he should study medicine, the regulation being a mere form,
probably to carry out the idea that every citizen possessing the
franchise should have a trade of some kind.
The prosperity of the Republic was not destroyed by this petty
revolution.  Churches were built and stones laid for the new walls of
Florence.  Relations with other states demanded the services of a
gracious and tactful {24} embassy.  Dante became an ambassador, and was
successful in arranging the business of diplomacy and in promoting the
welfare of his city.  He was too much engaged in important affairs to
pay attention to every miserable quarrel of the Florentines.  The
powerful Donati showed dangerous hostility now to the wealthy Cerchi,
their near neighbours.  Dante acted as a mediator when he could spare
the time to hear complaints.  He was probably more in sympathy with the
popular cause which was espoused by the Cerchi than with the arrogance
of his wife's family.
The feud of the Donati and Cerchi was fostered by the irruption of a
family from Pistoia, who had separated into two distinct branches--the
Bianchi and the Neri (the Whites and the Blacks)--and drawn their
swords upon each other.  The Cerchi chose to believe that the Bianchi
were in the right, and, of course, the Donati took up the cause of the
Neri.  The original dispute had long been forgotten, but any excuse
would serve two factions anxious to fight.  Brawling took place at a
May festa, in which several persons were wounded.
Dante was glad to divert his mind from all his discords when the last
year of the thirteenth century came and he set out to Rome on
pilgrimage.  At Easter all the world seemed to be flocking to that
solemn festival of the Catholic Church, where the erring could obtain
indulgence by fifteen days of devotion.  Yet the very break in the