by Paget Toynbee
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Dante Alighieri, a Florentine undeservedly in exile, to the most iniquitous Florentines within the city.

1. The gracious providence of the Eternal King, who in his goodness ever rules the affairs of the world above, yet ceases not to look down upon our concerns here below, committed to the Holy Roman Empire the governance of human affairs, to the end that mankind might repose in the peace of so powerful a protection, and everywhere, as nature demands, might live as citizens of an ordered world. And though the proof of this is to be found in holy writ, and though the ancients relying on reason alone bear witness thereto, yet is it no small confirmation of the truth, that when the throne of Augustus is vacant, the whole world goes out of course, the helmsman and rowers slumber in the ship of Peter, and unhappy Italy, forsaken and abandoned to private control, and bereft of all public guidance, is tossed with such buffeting of winds and waves as no words can describe, nay as even the Italians in their woe can scarce measure with their tears. Wherefore let all who in mad presumption have risen up against this most manifest will of God, now grow pale at the thought of the judgement of the stern Judge, which is nigh at hand, if so be the sword of Him who saith, 'Vengeance is mine', be not fallen out of heaven.

2. But you, who transgress every law of God and man, and whom the insatiable greed of avarice has urged all too willing into every crime, does the dread of the second death not haunt you, seeing that you first and you alone, shrinking from the yoke of liberty, have murmured against the glory of the Roman Emperor, the king of the earth, and minister of God; and under cover of prescnptive right, refusing the duty of submission due to him, have chosen rather to rise up in the madness of rebellion? Have you to learn, senseless and perverse ¹ as you are, that public right can be subject to no reckoning by prescription, but must endure so long as time itself endures? Verily the sacred precepts of the law declare, and human reason after inquiry has decided, that public control of affairs, however long neglected, can never become of no effect, nor be superseded, however much it be weakened. For nothing which tends to the advantage of all can be destroyed, or even impaired, without injury to all -- a thing contrary to the intention of God and nature, and which would be utterly abhorrent to the opinion of all mankind. Wherefore, then, being disabused of such an idle conceit, do you abandon the Holy Empire, and, like the men of Babel once more, seek to found new kingdoms, so that there shall be one polity of Florence, and another of Rome? And why should not the Apostolic government be the object of a like envy, so that, if the one twin of Delos have her double in the heavens, the other should have his likewise ²? But if reflection upon your evil designs bring you no fears, at least let this strike terror into your hardened hearts, that as the penalty for your crime not only wisdom, but the beginning of wisdom,³ has been taken from you. For no condition of the sinner is more terrible than that of him who, shamelessly and without the fear of God, does whatsoever he lists. Full often, indeed, the wicked man is smitten with this punishment, that as during life he has been oblivious of God, so when he dies he is rendered oblivious of himself.

3. But if your insolent arrogance has so deprived you of the dew from on high, like the mountain-tops of Gilboa, that you have not feared to resist the decree of the eternal senate, and have felt no fear at not having feared, shall that deadly fear, to wit human and worldly fear, not overwhelm you, when the inevitable shipwreck of your proud race, and the speedy end of your deeply to be rued lawlessness, shall be seen to be hard at hand? Do you put infallible signs and incontrovertible arguments, your city, worn out with ceaseless mourning, shall be delivered at the last into the hands of the stranger, after the greatest part of you has been destroyed in death or captivity; and the few that shall be left to endure exile shall witness her downfall with tears and lamentation. Those sufferings, in short, which for liberty's sake the glorious city of Saguntum endured in her loyalty, you in your disloyalty must undergo with shame but to become slaves.

5. And beware of gathering confidence from the unlooked-for success of the men of Parma, who under the spur of hunger, that evil counsellor, murmuring to one another, 'Let us rather rush into the midst of battle and meet death', broke into the camp of Caesar while Caesar was absent. For even they, though they gained a victory over Victoria, none the less reaped woe from that woe in a way not like to be forgotten. But bethink you of the thunderbolts of the first Frederick; consider the fate of Milan and of Spoleto; for at the remembrance of their disobedience and swift overthrow your too swollen flesh shall grow chilI, and your too hot hearts shall contract.⁴most foolish of the Tuscans, insensate alike by nature and by corruption, who neither consider nor understand in your ignorance how before the eyes of the full-fledged the feet of your diseased minds go astray in the darkness of night! For the full-fledged and undefiled in the way behold you standing as it were on the threshold of the prison, and thrusting aside any that has pity on you, lest haply he should deliver you from captivity and loose you from the chains that bind your hands and your feet. Nor are ye ware in your blindness of the overmastering greed which beguiles you with venomous whispers, and with cheating threats constrains you, yea, and has brought you into captivity to the law of sin, and forbidden you to obey the most sacred laws; those laws made in the likeness of natural justice, the observance whereof, if it be joyous, if it be free, is not only no servitude, but to him who observes with understanding is manifestly in itself the most perfect liberty. For what else is this liberty but the free passage from will to act, which the laws make easy for those who obey them? Seeing, then, that they only are free who of their own will submit to the law, what do you call yourselves, who, while you make pretence of a love of liberty, in defiance of every law conspire against the Prince who is the giver of the law?

6. 0 most wretched offshoot of Fiesole! 0 barbarians punished now a second time! Does the foretaste not suffice to terrify you? Of a truth I believe that, for you simulate hope in your looks and lying lips, yet you tremble in your waking hours, and ever start from your dreams in terror at the portents which have visited you, or rehearsing again the counsels you have debated by day. But if, while alarmed with good reason, you repent you of your madness, yet feel no remorse, then, that the streams of fear and remorse may unite in the bitter waters of repentance, bear this further in mind, that the guardian of the Roman Empire, the triumphant Henry, elect of God, thirsting not for his own but for the public good, has for our sakes undertaken his heavy task, sharing our pains of his own free will, as though to him, after Christ, the prophet Isaiah had pointed the finger of prophecy, when by the revelation of the Spirit of God he declared, 'Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows'. Wherefore you perceive, if you be not dissemblers, that the hour of bitter repentance for your mad presumption is now at hand. But a late repentance after this wise will not purchase pardon, rather is it but the prelude to seasonable chastisement. For 'the sinner is smitten so that he shall surely die'.

Written from beneath the springs of Arno, on the confines of Tuscany, on the thirty-first day of March in the first year of the most auspicious passage of the Emperor Henry into Italy.