The praise which Compagni, his contemporary, awards to Guido at the commencement of the foregoing extract, receives additional value when viewed in connection with the sonnet addressed to him by the same writer (see page 141), where we find that he could tell him of his faults.
Such scenes as the one related above had become common things in Florence, which kept on its course from bad to worse till Pope Boniface VIII. resolved on sending a legate to propose certain amendments in its scheme of government by Priori, or representatives of the various arts and companies. These proposals, however, were so ill received, that the legate, who arrived in Florence in the month of June 1300, departed shortly afterwards greatly incensed, leaving the city under a papal interdict. In the ill-considered tumults which ensued we again hear of Guido Cavalcanti.
"It happened" (says Giovanni Villani in his History of Florence) "that in the month of December (1300) Messer Corso Donati with his followers, and also those of the house of the Cerchi and their followers, going armed to the funeral of a lady of the Frescobaldi family, this party defying that by their looks would have assailed the one the other; whereby all those who were at the funeral having risen up tumultuously and fled each to his house, the whole city got under arms, both factions assembling in great numbers, at their respective houses. Messer Gentile de' Cerchi, Guido Cavalcanti, Baldinuccio and Corso Adimari, Baschiero della Tosa and Naldo Gherardini, with their comrades and adherents on horse and on foot, hastened to St Peter's Gate to the house of the Donati. Not finding them there they went on to San Pier Maggiore, where Messer Corso was with his friends and followers; by whom they were encountered and put to flight, with many wounds and with much shame to the party of the Cerchi and to their adherents."
By this time we may conjecture as probable that Dante, in the arduous position which he then filled as chief of the nine Priori on whom the Government of
himself went by the name of Malefammi or "Do-me-harm." For an account of his death in 1307, which proved in keeping with his turbulent life, see Dino Compagni's Chronicle, or the Pecorone of Giovanni Fiorentin (Gior. xxiv. Nov. 2).
