It is not known whether Dante returned to Florence after his embassy to Rome where he met with Boniface VIII, escaping before the sentences of 1302 were passed, or whether, foreseeing what was to come, he simply did not return home. Moreover, little documentation is available for the years of his exile, when his life took a decidedly different turn, and which profoundly affected his ideological development. Until the early months of 1304, Dante was active alongside the banished Whites, and the Ghibellines, in organizing a military expedition against the Blacks who now ruled Florence. In June 1302, at San Godenzo al Mugello, he signed an undertaking to compensate the Ubaldini, powerful local rulers, for any damage resulting from a war against Florence. In 1303, he was a guest of Scarpetta degli Ordelaffi in Forlì, and later the same year was in Verona seeking Bartolomeo della Scala’s support for the White cause. The death of Boniface VIII in 1304 and the peace mission to Florence of Cardinal Nicolò da Prato – to whom Dante sent his Epistle I - gave him hope that a peaceful solution would be found. This, however, did not happen, on account of the intransigence of the Blacks. At this point a divergence grew between Dante, who resolved to be “a party unto himself”, and the other exiles, who advocated a risky military solution, which turned out to be the devastating Battle at La Lastra. In the second half of 1304, Dante started out on a pilgrimage through the courts of central and northern Italy, first to Treviso, where he was a guest of Gherardo da Camino, then Bologna in 1305, Padua, Venice and the Treviso area the following year, and, at the end of 1306, Lunigiana, with the Malaspina counts. During 1307 he was a guest of Guido da Battifolle in the Casentino, later moving on to Lucca, possibly as a guest of a woman called Gentucca, recalled in Purg., XXIV 37. His “legendary” journey to Paris may have taken place between 1309 and 1310.

Detail from a manuscript illumination of Dante exiled from Florence.

La Divina Commedia di Alfonso d’Aragona. Commentario al codice, edited by M. Bollati, Modena, Franco Panini Editore, 2006, vol. II, p. 111.