Biography | Dante Alighieri — Prior for Two Months in the Torre della Castagna

People treat Dante’s priorate as a desk in the Palazzo Vecchio.

That palace was still rising.

On 15 June 1300 he took one of the six prior seats for a two-month term that ended on 15 August.

The priors of the guilds still locked themselves into this older tower, the Torre della Castagna on Piazza San Martino, so they would not have to fear the threats of the powerful.

Dino Compagni wrote that line about the first priors of 1282.

The plaque on Via Dante Alighieri still repeats the function.

Dante had enrolled in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali, the guild that let a man who was not a knight hold office under the Ordinances of Justice.

Two months earlier, on 7 May, he had spoken as ambassador at San Gimignano.

The work in this tower was not ceremonial.

Florence was splitting into White and Black Guelfs.

Boniface VIII was pushing Charles of Valois toward Tuscany.

The priors of Dante’s bimestre chose a hard peace: they sent leaders of both factions out of the city.

Among the Whites sent to Sarzana was Guido Cavalcanti, Dante’s friend.

Guido came back ill and died that August.

The new Palazzo dei Priori, begun in 1299 on the cleared Uberti ground, was not yet the working house of government.

This chestnut-named tower, facing the block later rebuilt as the Casa di Dante museum, was.

A two-month magistracy here made him visible to the party that would try him once the Blacks rode back in.

Photo: Gianni Careddu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons