to the Pope, who was then at Rome, in order to persuade him to oppose the coming of the said Charles, or to make him come with the consent of the ruling party. When they came to consider who should be the head of this embassy, all agreed on Dante. To their request he replied, after quietly meditating on it for a while, 'If I go, who stays? And if I stay, who goes?' as if he alone was of worth among them all, and as if the others were nothing worth except through him. These words were understood and remembered, but that which followed from them is not pertinent to the present subject, wherefore I leave it and pass on.
Furthermore, this excellent man was most undaunted in all his adversities. In one thing alone he was, I do not know whether I should say passionate, or merely impatient: to wit, that after he went into exile he devoted himself much more to party affairs than befitted his quality, and more than he was willing to have others believe. To the end that it may be clear for what party he was so vehement and determined, it seems to me that I ought to write something further.
I believe it was the just anger of God which permitted, a long time ago, that nearly all Tuscany and Lombardy should be divided into two parties. Whence they received these names I do not know, but one was called, and is still called, the Guelf party, and the other the Ghibelline. Of such power and reverence were these two names in the foolish minds of many, that, in order to defend his party against the other, it was not hard for a man to lose all his possessions, nay, and finally his life too, if there were need. Under these titles the Italian cities sustained most grievous oppression and vicissitudes, and among them our city, which was as it were the head, now of one party, and now of the other, according as the citizens changed. Dante's ancestors, for example, were twice, as Guelfs, exiled by the Ghibellines, and it was under the title of Guelf that he held the reins of the republic in Florence. It was not,
58
