Verona, Lordship of

Conradin, son of the late Holy Roman Emperor Conrad IV, had assumed the title of King of Jerusalem and Sicily and had taken possession of the Duchy of Swabia in 1262, remaining for some time in his duchy.

Conradin's first invitation to Italy had come from the Guelphs of Florence: they had asked him to take arms against his father's half-brother Manfred, who had been crowned king of Sicily in 1258 on a false rumor of Conradin's death.

Conradin’s uncle and guardian, Louis II, Duke of Upper Bavaria, had refused this invitation on his nephew's behalf.

After Charles I of Anjou had defeated and killed Manfred at Benevento, taking possession of southern Italy, envoys from the Ghibelline cities had then gone to Bavaria and urged Conradin to come and free Italy.

Count Guido de Montefeltro, representing Henry of Castile, Senator of Rome, has offered him the support of the eternal city.

Pledging his lands, Conradin crosses the Alps and issues a manifesto at Verona setting forth his claim on Sicily.

Dante, moving to various centers sympathetic to the Ghibelline cause, has begun to produce a steady stream of literary work.

In his unfinished Convivio (“The Banquet”), written around 1304-07, the poet, apparently immersing himself in the pagan philosophers and cultivation of the Roman tradition, expatiates on his earlier love poetry.

In his pioneering study of linguistics and style, De vulgari eloquentia (“On the Vulgar Speech”), written around 1304-06 in Latin, Dante argues for the use of the vernacular in serious works of literature and for combining a number of Italian dialects to create a new national language.

Some speculative sources say that Dante had also been in Paris between 1308 and 1310.

Other sources, even less trustworthy, take him to Oxford.

When Henry VII of Germany marches five thousand troops into Italy in November 1310, Dante, seeing in Henry a new Charlemagne who will restore the office of the Holy Roman Emperor to its former glory and also retake Florence from the Black Guelphs, writes to the King and several Italian princes, demanding that they destroy the Black Guelphs.

Mixing religion and private concerns, he invokes the worst anger of God against his city, suggesting several particular targets that coincide with his personal enemies.

It is during this time that he writes the first two books of the Divine Comedy.

Henry VII, after encountering opposition from Guelph factions, openly embraces the pro-imperialist Ghibelline cause and makes Pisa his base.

Cangrande, a young Italian nobleman, is the most celebrated of the della Scala family that from 1277 until 1387 rules Verona.

Today perhaps best known as the leading patron of the poet Dante Alighieri, Cangrande is in his own day chiefly acclaimed as a successful warrior and autocrat.

Born at Verona, the third son of Alberto I della Scala, ruler of Verona, and Verde da Salizzole, and christened Can Francesco, perhaps partly in punning homage to his uncle Mastino ("mastiff") I, the founder of the Scaligeri dynasty, his physical and mental precocity had soon earned him the name Cangrande, namely "big" or "great dog".

The canine theme is enthusiastically embraced and from Cangrande's reign onward the Scaliger lords will use a dog motif on their helmets and also on their tombs and other monuments.

Cangrande had seen his first military action in the campaigns of his other brother Alboino I della Scala—who had succeeded Bartolomeo in 1304—fighting alongside other Ghibelline leaders against the Guelph dynast Azzo VIII of Este, Lord of Ferrara.

He had in 1308 begun to share the rule of Verona with Alboino.

This was also the year of his marriage to Giovanna of Antioch, a descendant of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, a union which is to endure for his lifetime but bring no heirs, although he is to father several illegitimate children.

Henry VII had arrived in Italy in November 1310 intent on reconciling Guelph and Ghibelline under the banner of a united empire.

In reality he had soon found himself reliant on the support of Ghibelline magnates to further his aims, prominent among them Cangrande and Alboino, who he makes Imperial Vicars of Verona.

The two brothers in April 1311 co-lead an imperial army that swiftly liberates Verona's neighbor Vicenza from the rule of Padua, this city having rebelled against the Emperor's authority.

From May to October of 1311, Cangrande commands the Italian levies in the siege of Brescia, where the Guelph faction had seized control in defiance of Henry.

When the Guelphs surrender on September 16, 1311, he is chosen to ride at the head of three hundred knights in Henry's triumphal entry into the city.

Having set out to accompany the Emperor on his coronation journey to Rome, Cangrande hastens back to Verona on hearing that his brother had fallen dangerously ill.

Alboino dies on November 29, 1311, and Cangrande becomes sole ruler of Verona at the age of twenty.

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.

Guido II da Polenta, the nephew of Lamberto I da Polenta, had acquired the lordship of Ravenna after the latter's death.

In 1316–1321 he was host of Dante Alighieri.

In 1322 he is named capitano del popolo of Bologna and leaves the government of Ravenna to his brother Rinaldo, who was archbishop of the city though without the Papal confirmation.

Ostasio I da Polenta, from the family line of Cervia, profited of the situation to kill Rinaldo and seize the power for himself.

The first Gonzaga family members of historical importance are known to have collaborated in the Guelph faction alongside the monks of the Polirone Abbey.

Beginning in the twelfth century, they have become an important family in Mantua, and had grown richer when their allies, the Bonacolsi, defeated the traditional familiar enemy, the Casalodi.

In 1328, however, Ludovico I Gonzaga overthrows the Bonacolsi lordship over the city with the help of the Scaliger family, and enters the Ghibelline party as capitano del popolo ("people's captain") of Mantua and imperial vicar of emperor Louis IV.