Dante, his hopes for an imperial victory…

Dante, his hopes for an imperial victory finally dashed after the death of Holy Roman emperor Henry VII, lives at the courts of young Can Grande della Scala in Verona.

In his De Monarchia (“On Monarchy”), written in Latin in 1313, Dante makes an exceptional, theoretical effort to recover both Romes—the Roman church and the Roman state.

He makes the case that a united world order of the Respublica Christiana ("Republic of Christendom") should be jointly governed by a temporal Holy Roman emperor deriving his supreme authority in unbroken descent from the Roman emperor Augustus and by a spiritual pope, no longer a rival for worldly power, deriving his authority in unbroken descent from Saint Peter.

Both authorities, argues the author, should operate harmoniously within their distinct spheres to produce peace and concord.

Dante also experiments further with style and content in individual poems and writes Latin eclogues and epistles.