volved in spiritual affairs. He joined the Physicians and Apothecaries Guild and soon became a fairly important politician. At the turn of the century, Dante rose from city Councilman to Ambassador of Florence. At this time, the Guelfs had split into two factions, the Black and White Guelfs. The Black Guelfs supported Pope Boniface VIII and his quest to seize Florence's province; the White Guelfs, however, did not support the Pope. Dante tried to show his neutrality for the groups by exiling the leaders of both factions, which included his brother-in-law and his best friend. Finally in 1302, while Dante was away serving an ambassadorship in the town of Siena, the Black Guelfs and their French allies took over the city. They confiscated Dante's possessions and sentenced him to banishment from Florence, threatening the death penalty upon him if he returned. Dante first traveled to Verona, spending most of his time in exile writing new pieces of literature. Afterwards, he traveled as far as Paris and Oxford before settling in Ravenna in 1319. It is believed that around 1307 he interrupted his unfinished work, Convivio, a reflection of his love poetry philosophy of the Roman tradition, to begin The Divine Comedy. He also wrote a book called De Vulgari Eloquentia, which explained the origins and types of human language and devices of poetry, in addition to his idea to combine a number of Italian dialects to create a new national language. In 1310, he wrote De Monarchia presenting Dante's case for a one-ruler world order. In 1321, Dante was sent by the lord of Ravenna as an ambassador to Venice to settle arguments over trade regulations, and upon his return to Ravenna, he fell sick with Malaria and died on September 13, 1321.Among his works, The Divine Comedy is the most famous and reputable. He began writing it around 1307 and finished it only a short while before his death. In this work, Dante introduced his invention of the te...
