Hyde, J K. “Politics in the Age of Dante.” In Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: The Evolution of the Civil Life, 1000–1350, edited by J K Hyde, 124–52. London: Macmillan Education UK, 1973.

Abstract:

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 and died at Ravenna in 1321. The greatest poet not only of communal Italy but of the whole of the Middle Ages, his lifetime is generally considered to have coincided with the golden age of the Italian medieval city. Because of this, and because the historian’s source materials for this time are usually near the golden mean between the scarcity of the earlier and the daunting fullness of the later periods, the age of Dante has been much studied. There exists a fair number of up-to-date books on particular cities or regions in English as well as in Italian and other languages, so that it is comparatively easy to find information about the internal developments within the various states. It is much more difficult to form an accurate idea of the general political atmosphere and the currents which affected the policies of the cities in their relations with their neighbours and the outside world. The period of the eclipse of the Empire beginning in 1250, or more accurately in 1266–8, is usually regarded as one of extreme political decentralisation in Italy, and indeed, the wealth and freedom of the communes after the elimination of the Hohenstaufen threat allowed them to express their cultural and political individuality to the full.

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