Dante Alighieri: Four Political Letters

During the early years of the fourteenth century Italy was in turmoil. Factional conflicts divided citizens of the same city against one another, while the great medieval institutions of Church and Empire struggled to impose their authority over the peninsula. Against this political background, and in exile from his beloved Florence, Dante wrote the letters contained in this volume. The themes of the letters are those same political concerns which Dante expounds in his treatise the Monarchi...