.. for
the Signori da Polenta."
Dante as we may think spent the last four years of his life in
Ravenna. Those four years we shall consider presently. Here it will be
enough to note that he met his death at last in the service of his
host and benefactor Guido Novello. The most disastrous action of his
life was, it will be remembered, the embassy he made on behalf of his
own city of Florence to pope Boniface VIII. That business cost him his
home and the city he loved with so cruel a passion; it made him an
exile. It was upon the longest journey of all that his last embassy
sent him. He set out it seems as ambassador of Guido Novello for
Venice, which so far as the sea and all its business are concerned had
long replaced Ravenna as mistress of the Adriatic. The recent
acquisition of the city and the salt flats of Cervia by Ravenna had
become a grievance with the Venetians who desired that monopoly for
themselves. It seems that in some local quarrel at Cervia certain
Venetian sailors had been killed and Dante went on Guide's behalf to
clear the matter up. He was to be as it happened as unsuccessful in
his last embassy as he had been in his first.
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